The UK Press Gazette reports that the Hull Daily Mail has become one of the first regional newspapers to offer readers regular video streaming of its local news online. Yet another example of the repidly changing nature of the media and how PRs need to work hard to keep up.
Former American President George Bush is the keynote speaker at the 2006 Yorkshire International Business Convention. It's a few years since I last attended YIBC and I have to say that Bush isn't a name that appeals to me. But what the heck YIBC is mainly about the power networking so all I'd have to do is remember to behave myself and not jeer him!
Despite yesterday's news about the final demise of Supertram Leeds is still a hot bed of development activity. HBG Properties, the national property development arm of HBG UK Ltd, has acquired a large development site close to the centre of Leeds for £19.25 million.
The 9½ acre site is to be regenerated by HBG for mixed use, including offices and residential properties as well as a small retail element. It will include an element of affordable residential units. Researchers from the University of Leeds have recently published a report that says developers must build city centre apartments in Leeds aimed at families as well as small apartments for young professionals.
The HBG site fronts Whitehall Road, the Leeds-Liverpool Canal and the River Aire, with the mainline railway forming the southern boundary. Formerly the site of the Monk Bridge Iron & Steel Works, the land is a clear reminder of Leeds’ industrial heritage, with a variety of engineering buildings and forges dating back to the 1840s and bisected by a Grade II Listed stone Victorian viaduct that dates back to 1847.
HBG is conducting a limited competition for a master plan for the site, with four architects competing - Aedas Architects, Allies & Morrison, EDAW and Make.
Ian Pennington, Director of HBG Properties and based in Leeds, said: “We are very pleased to have secured this important site in Leeds and are excited by the prospects of developing a strategic modern new environment for the business community here. The site will be quite self-contained, but will have very good access to the main transport links into and around Leeds. We see this as a prime opportunity to attract existing and new, growth-orientated companies into the centre of this city”.
Yorkshirebiztalk.com is a new business blog dedicated to talking about all aspects of business in Yorkshire and the Humber. It's going to be a team blog with contributions from a range of different people who care about business in the region. The first two authors are both partners in Leeds-based public relations company Bruce Marshall Associates. Over the next few days, weeks and months we'll gradually be introducing some new authors including business people from small and large companies, and in very senior positions and more junior roles. We'll also have politicians, journalists, academics and contributions from the public sector and quangoes.
As each new author starts to blog they'll be asked to write a short introductory post about them self so you'll have an idea where they are coming from.
But what's going to really make this blog sing is if enough people not only read it but start to comment and have a real debate about the issues that matter to Yorkshire business. The best commentators will also be invited to become authors in their own right.
We're not expecting the blog to be an overnight success but we are hopeful that sufficient forward thinking Yorkshire business people will take part to make it work.
At the Business Editors' blog Stuart Rock offers an interesting analysis
of Sir Ken Morrison's predicament following Bradford-based Morrison's
acquisition of Safeways. I've commented on the blog about how much of
the London-based media coverage has had a distinctly anti-Northern
bias. In my humble opinion Morrison's problems are not to do with being
a 'northern grocer' but simply of not being as good as some of the
original media hype suggested. Leeds-based Asda is a northern grocer (although now owned by the Americans) that delivers both quality and price. Booths is a northern grocer (from the other side of the Pennines) that delivers quality that beats Waitrose, Sainsbury
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