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City Life (magazine)

City Life
Categories Entertainment magazine
Frequency Weekly
Year founded December 1983
Final issue December 2005
Company Trinity Mirror
Country United Kingdom
Based in Manchester
Website www.citylife.co.uk

City Life was a Manchester-based news, arts and listings magazine that was published between December 1983 and December 2005. It was a distinctive blend of radical politics and coverage of the increasingly exciting Manchester youth culture scene of the early 1980s, coinciding with the rise of Factory Records and The Haçienda.

The magazine was started by a small group of former Manchester University students, Ed Glinert, Chris Paul and Andy Spinoza, on a shoestring budget in a run-down building in Portland Street in the city centre.

Glinert ran spiky and revelatory news stories about city politics and the great and good. Spinoza edited the arts and features and contributed a wide range of interviews and criticism. Paul was production editor and edited the sports section.

When launched in 1983, the magazine was in a strong tradition of 'alternative' Manchester publications which included (in reverse chronology), City Fun, Manchester Flash, New Manchester Review and Mole Express, all of whose approach was to publish political and cultural content not reflected in the mainstream media of the city.

Despite City Life's shoestring beginnings, it developed rapidly in professionalism and grew in prominence and influence in Manchester and beyond. Its life can be divided into two distinct periods, the first being the period 1983-89 when it was run as a workers' co-operative which grew from the initial founding trio to 16 staff at its peak.

There is a consensus that this 'independent' period was when the title had a rawer and radical edge than under its later ownership. Its political stories caused consternation and complaints - there were numerous spats with councils, quangos and occasionally blank spaces where legal injunctions had caused stories to be pulled just prior to printing.

Similarly, its arts writing can be seen as a vibrant record of a ground-level cultural renaissance taking place with the opening of new facilities as the Hacienda (1982), the Green Room performance venue (1984) and the Cornerhouse visual arts centre (1985); this upsurge was typified by the imaginative re-using of old and vacant city centre buildings for arts and leisure, and can be seen as a key building block of what was later hailed as the physical regeneration of Manchester city centre through widespread commercial investment and property development.

In 1989, it was bought by the Guardian Media Group (GMG), publishers of The Guardian and The Manchester Evening News. GMG changed the style of the magazine, focusing more on listings and interviews, and branching out into publishing guide books and sponsoring events such as the City Life Food and Drink Festival and the City Life Comedian of the Year competition.


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