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Greater Manchester Police cares about how it is seen. So much so, that it has set up something called the ‘media relations scorecard’.

Each month, an independent company analyses 200 randomly-selected cuttings from regional and national newspapers.

These are then assessed and put into a number of different categories depending on their contents and tone.

Apparently GMP’s ‘general rating’ for positive coverage is between 53 and 58 per cent (most organisations score 48-53 per cent). And the number of articles categorised as ‘frightening’ has fallen from 17 per cent in August to just 8 per cent in October.

I’m sure you will all sleep more soundly in your beds reading that.

Frankly, complaining about the BBC not featuring non-religious perspectives in a slot that is wholly reserved for religious commentary is akin to complaining that Match of the Day gives no space to the game of bowls.

- The Bishop of Manchester, speaking in the House of Lords last week

Speaking of Marketing Manchester, deputy chief executive Paul Simpson wrote a report for the leaders of the 10 council leaders of Greater Manchester last week.

The topic? Marketing Manchester’s budget for next year. And, specifically, the need for the councils to provide £433,960.

The report lists a number of important ‘profile-raising’ achievements last year. But it also contains some of the most perfect pieces of jargon I have ever read.

Here is the best bit:

The Marketing Co-ordination Unit has been based within Marketing Manchester since April 2008. The Unit works to co-ordinate and add value to all marketing activity, particularly within prioritised markets, in order to continue to shift perceptions of the Manchester brand… The Unit is currently working on the development of an umbrella marketing strategy for Manchester, within which leisure and business tourism will be a key priority alongside the business marketing of the city region. The strategy will set out a framework that identifies primary and secondary markets and sectors alongside a messaging matrix that supports the communications objectives of all sub-regional partners.

Marketing Manchester – the organisation tasked with selling our city-region to the world – is  already thinking about next year’s party political conferences.

Senior types are worried that both Leeds and Birmingham had similar stands at the Labour and Conservative events this autumn.

So how to keep ahead of the pack? According to a new report, Marketing Manchester plans to ‘deliver a high-profile fringe event at each party conference, with the right representation from each party, a credible and high-profile host (e.g. David Dimbleby, Andrew Marr etc.)’.

Nothing wrong with being ambitious. And, as they saying goes, shoot for the stars and you might just get the moon (or in in this case, Gordon Burns or Jim Hancock).

Ian Simpson, the architect whose glassy monoliths have become synonymous with 21st-century Manchester,  has won the race to refurbish the town hall extension.

His company were awarded the contract this week – with London-based Ryder Architecture getting a second, to re-fit the Central Library.

The entire project is expected to take four years and cost in the region of £165m.

Council chiefs have promised the new designs will be ’sympathethic’. Something like this, perhaps?

Cliff Twemlow

Fortunately, some kind soul has uploaded a few bits of footage of Cliff and his crew so you can see for yourself the kind of schlock horror exploits they got up to.

They’re verging on so bad that they’re good and well worth a look. There are links here to the trailers for Tokyo Sunrise, Eye Of Satan, Moonstalker and Target Eve Island.

Incidentally, you can buy CP Lee and Andy Willis’s book here.

ITV has confirmed that Phil Collinson is to join the company as the new Producer of Coronation Street.  Manchester based Phil joins ITV STUDIOS from the BBC where his credits include Series Producer for the iconic Doctor Who.

 Phil will take over from Kim Crowther who has decided to step down after two and a half years as Producer of the UK’s favourite soap. Phil will join in March to allow for a suitable handover period.  Kim will continue to produce the show through to the early summer of 2010. Phil will report into Kieran Roberts, Executive Producer of Coronation Street.

Sad to hear about Nigel Sarbutts losing his job as managing director at Communique, which he at least seems to have taken graciously.
What’s equally sad about this, however, is what has become of Communique itself.
I remember walking into what were Communique’s offices in Canal Street for the first time and seeing what has since pretty much become the blueprint for the type of blond wood hang-outs where PR-types work their peculiar form of magic.
That was only 10 years or so ago and people spoke then about Manchester’s “big three” public relations consultancies as some kind of unbreachable triumvirate – destined to remain that way for ever more.
Paul Carroll might be a Leeds fan, but give him his due, Communique was the agency which got people talking with all manner of cunning stunts – the Julia Heinken campaign being just one of them – while fellow “big three” agencies Mason Williams and Staniforth tended to get on with things which weren’t quite so red top.
Carroll’s master stroke, however, seems to have been selling Communique on to Burson Marsteller in 2001.
He told me in an interview shortly after that he’d made £6.5m from the deal.
Eight years on, I really can’t help wondering now what exactly it was that Burson bought.
It wasn’t the building – Carroll himself owned that – and it wasn’t his brain, because that’s now being put to use, I think, at Zuma 001.
Communique certainly isn’t the high-profile, stunt-pulling, headline hogging place it used to be.
In fact, the last time I had any real dealings with them was in relation to their part in the congestion charge “No Campaign”, and Sarbutts inisisted that they weren’t a part of the story and should be kept right out of – until they won an award for it! Strange that.
While it’s great that there’s now loads more competition in town, it still seems a little sad that Communique – in terms of seismic activity at least – has fallen off the Richter scale.
It seems that the best pitch Paul Carroll ever pulled might have been the one in which he flogged Communique.

This is a test post on the super new – to us – Wordpress system, on what will be the home of my Media Matters blog from here on in.

I hope to break stories, chew the cud and generally take a look at what’s happening in media land.

I think our MPs are excited about being back in Westminster.
First Ed Balls opens the Queen’s Speech debate like this:

Then Andy Burnham – quoting The Thick of It – describes Tory health policy as an ‘omnishambles’.
We can only hope that as election fever mounts, there will be more Malcolm Tucker-isms hurled across the chamber.