I’ve been following the news in my car and online today for reaction to the Government’s City Deals announcement, which hands more powers to some of England’s largest metropolitan areas outside London.

These deals for Birmingham, Bristol, Leeds, Liverpool, Newcastle, Nottingham, Sheffield and Manchester will see them take on new responsibilities and, in some cases, form new bodies which aim to drive growth and create thousands of new jobs in their areas.

If the recent mayoral referenda acts as any yardstick, then a story about boosting city economies does not excite the London-centric media, despite the fact that England’s eight core cities have more than 17m residents and generate around 25% of the country’s wealth.

And, true to form, the response from the national media seems to have been to play it straight or not at all (I had to dig around some websites amongst stories about Bob Diamond and cuts to the Army, also announced today, to find any coverage on this).

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