Tees Business #4 | Page 5

Serving the Teesside Business Community | 5 /NEWS Opening – the TV physicist spoke to Tees Business. WHY WE STILL BELIEVE IN PRINT MEDIA There are so-called experts who work in media and marketing who would have you believe the print industry is on borrowed time. You can’t deny it has suffered considerably and that we all must embrace the modern world of digital media, while the newspaper industry’s steady 20-year decline has probably gained even more momentum in recent years. Master class – Professor Brian Cox spoke to students at Middlesbrough College. STEM IS ‘STROKE OF GENIUS’ SAYS COX TV star physicist Brian Cox said Middlesbrough College’s new STEM Centre should be a “blueprint for the country”. T he £20m facility – which focuses on science, technology, engineering and maths – replicates a genuine industrial environment, and the equipment and professional operations are what you’d expect to find anywhere in industry. Professor Cox told Tees Business: “It’s a genuinely impressive place. “It’s a terrifically good idea. But like all ideas, it was a stroke of genius to think of it, and then very difficult to execute, but it’s been executed perfectly as far as I can see. “Not only is this fully functioning with thousands of students, but this looks to me like a blueprint. We hear a lot about rebalancing the economy towards high-tech industry, and if you’re going to do that you need these, and there aren’t many of them. “This is obviously the way to go as a country. If you think about the raw material that this country has – it’s not vast resources, it’s not like Australia where you can just dig uranium out of the ground everywhere – it’s its people. “If you look at this region, not only have you got an enthusiastic future workforce – which you see all over the place at this college – but you’ve got a history of it going back for generations, a history of people, families and communities that understand what it is to work in complex, heavy industries, as well as new, high-tech manufacturing industries. “That heritage is probably the most valuable thing we have as a country. It’s an obvious thing, but it’s hard to get everyone to go in the same direction. “But it’s quite obvious that you take that heritage as a raw material and convert it into economic and industrial growth, so we need these places.” Middlesbrough MP Andy McDonald, who’s also a governor of Middlesbrough College, told us: “I’m just bursting with pride about this place. “It’s so ambitious and incredibly well thought through, by people who know their industries inside-out, a coming together of educationalists who wanted to enter into a partnership.” Bannatyne is ‘in’ for jungle show! F ormer Dragons’ Den star and Tees-based businessman Duncan Bannatyne is donating his fee for appearing on I’m A Celebrity Get Me Out of Here to help fund more than 100 operations for African children. The 66-year-old Yarm-based entrepreneur has not revealed how much will be paid, but has said it will be enough for 125 “life changing” operations, for the charity Operation Smile, of which he is an ambassador. Bannatyne, whose chain of health and But we passionately believe there is still very much a market, and a need, for the printed publication – and the proof of the pudding, as they say, is in the eating (or the reading, in this case). Tees Business is living proof of this. Launched only this year – this is our fourth edition – it’s quite clear that, certainly in terms of B2B marketing, there is still a place for print. We have more than embraced digital media at H