Splashed across an impressive sky shot of the Mersey, and the city, the incongruous story reported that one in five Merseyside businesses was at risk. It was a deeply sobering report and reminded me of how I felt when a corporate lawyer friend told me last year, in succinct terms: "It's a massacre out there."
The importance of business to the country has been brought into piercing focus over the last two years. I hope that the media and the public generally now fully grasp why specifically small firms matter. 
I admit a personal interest at this point. For two years between 2004 and 2006 I ran the press office for the Forum of Private Business (FPB), a national business pressure group fighting for the UK's 4m small firms and their 12m employees, a third of the UK workforce.
When I took over the press office Len Collinson the veteran entrepreneur was kicking the FPB into shape. For years the FPB, based in Knutsford, had quietly gone about its work but in truth had been too taciturn. Len wanted that to change.
He wanted a bit of, what West Indian fast bowlers used to term, 'chin music'. He wanted it to start talking with more blood and thunder, just like business owners do - fire in its belly, purpose in the eye.
It was a terrific time where most weeks the FPB was in the cut and thrust of the national news agenda. There were regular appearances on BBC News at Ten, ITN, Radio Four and Five Live and of course the Daily Post whose business coverage is outstanding. Generally the regional business pages gave us great coverage and the underestimated trade media followed our noisy campaigns. We grew the average monthly media circulation to between 30m and 40m and generated more than £2m worth of coverage a year in print media.
But while all this was great fun and experience two things stick in my mind.
First, the fundamental decency, incredible gumption and hard working ethic of business owners. Every day I would speak to bosses, men and women, from across the country risking everything  they owned to earn a living.
They were taking the strain and the pressure to help generate jobs and wealth for their communities. Sure some of them did well for themselves but rarely without a huge amount of sacrifice, blood, sweat and tears. Speaking on their behalf in the media is one of the true privileges of my career.
The second point that sticks with me is the at times woeful lack of knowledge, interest and understanding about small business in the media notably the BBC.
I remember speaking to one of the most senior BBC business executives in London who didn't have a clue how many small firms there were in the UK.  The BBC was simply not used to prioritising small business issues.
Big business and the City to an extent, but small firms, the real engine room of the economy, driving 50pc of GDP, no. Ironically the BBC's lightweight approach to business coverage was a real gripe of Greg Dyke its former Director General and of Geoff Randall its former Business Editor.
The recession has changed that - to a point. It has forced business - and critically the plight of small business - quite remorselessly to the forefront of the news agenda . The key now is that it must stay there. Business must be encouraged and an entrepreneurial culture cultivated and recognised in mainstream news reporting. 
Why? Because the country needs it more than ever.  If we are to recover from the recession quickly we need business to be firing. We need more entrepreneurs. Schools and universities need greater focus on entrepreneurship. But kids have to want to do it in the first place. They need high profile role models. 
Business underpins our ability as families, communities and as a nation to function. It is that fundamental. Without a thriving business community everything else suffers - not so much a domino affect as a motorway pile up: job creation, wealth creation, skills training for young people, tax raising and therefore the public services, charity donations , media advertising and so on.  So really we have no choice, we have to do this.
Today largely because of my experience with the FPB I run my own PR firm with my business partner Emma Parker Goff.  And I know just what goes into running a business, the hours, the sacrifice, the worry and what you get out - the huge sense of achievement, the sense of purpose.
We still promote the voice of business through our client Private Sector Partners which speaks for 140,000 North West firms.

BEN PINNINGTON is a director of Wirral-based PR firm Artemis