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THERE ARE NOW 52 reporters across 27 bases where five years ago there were 14 across 12 - and Manners can guarantee ordered stories will be in to meet deadlines within 60 minutes.
    When something like the Paddington train crash breaks, most papers will have it on their front pages.  Manners' operation will back up with inside spreads on rogue signals, victims' stories, eyewitness accounts. 
    Each morning, Manners and Mastin read the wire, talk to the newsdesk in London and their subs will be liaising with regional newspaper subs on their specific pages.
    Pages flash down to customers and come back for a final OK from Manners, Mastin and the chief sub. "The customer always knows what's on the page so there are no doubles through the paper," says Manners.

    There's a weekly conference on Fridays where the team goes through all the copies of the papers it supplies and "has a huge autopsy". "How we mucked, up", as Manners describes it.
    Twice each day at 8.30arn and 3.30pm, Mastin, Jenkins and he take part in the London news conference sitting round a "buzz box", hearing what's corning up and suggesting pictures and break-outs.
    The team produces backgrounders on court cases - "I don't think anybody does them better than PA" - and has a series of spreads ready to go when the trial of accused murderer Dr Harold Shipman concludes.
    Very often too, they are able to tip off their customers to upcoming court cases concerning local people and leave the papers to do the stories themselves.
    Manners is making a big push into graphics in January after feedback from editors indicated it was what they most wanted.  He has established a graphics desk right behind the back bench so duty editors can just shout for a locater graphic when, for instance, there is an earthquake in Turkey.
    By chance, he has discovered that his three graphic artists are all cartoonists.  They regularly do a cartoon for the Shropshire Star's weekly round-up of the Welsh Assembly and now Wales on Sunday is interested in a similar feature and every single editor on the books wants to look at the centre's cartoons.
    Morning paper page-ready is to get upgraded in the New Year because morning papers are mushrooming and Manners' team is trialling for more than the Liverpool Post and the Birmingham Post.  The Press Association is determined to maintain its neutrality and supply everybody from Associated's and Modern Times Group new Metros to the home-grown new mornings.
    Manners' staff is now 60 per cent made up of "pedigree" journalists and he is still recruiting.  He reckons that while he does not pay "biggest money" he can add £2,000 to £3,000 to the salary of key executives.

    Leeds, with its developing upmarket canal waterfront and buzzy shops, is a world away from the Yorkshire Ripper territory it used to be and another bait in Manners' poaching bag.
    He is anxious to update his pages for late editions, not satisfied that a Leeds 8.30am page goes unrefreshed when evenings have editions up to 1pm - "PA is very good at the latest news".
    Within 12 months, he says, it is his intention to double the number of papers taking page-ready and to increase his supplements service - in 2000, the team will do 12 to 18 major supplements, which Manners is helping to sell now.
    The virtual newspaper has no greater backer than PA editor-in-chief Paul Potts, with whom Manners worked for eight years as night editor of the Daily Express when Potts was deputy editor.
    They have had their ups and downs, concedes Manners, but: "I know what he wants and I'm going to deliver it.  I'm going to bloody well make it work for him."

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