The death of a great newspaper by a thousand cuts
Kenneth Roy
If one of Scotland’s highest-profile organisations suddenly announced that it was making all its staff redundant and inviting them to apply for their own jobs on new terms and conditions, while making it clear that an unspecified number would not be returning, you can be sure that it would be on the front page of our leading national newspaper, the Herald. This astonishing development did, in fact, occur yesterday but you would be hard pressed to find it reported anywhere in the Herald.
GOING OUT (the teaser across the front page) is not, after all, a reference to the workers who have just been given their jotters. ‘Yet another Scottish building company goes bust’ (page 2) – no, it’s not that either. ‘Living out sunset years in the sun’ – could the day’s main feature be a preview of what lies in store for the employees in question? Evidently not. Likewise, ‘Fast-track opportunity to get the economy moving’ – Harry Reid’s comment piece – proves to be unrelated to yesterday’s fast-track opportunity to get the job centre moving.
Eventually, I did find a short mention of the treatment of a Scottish workforce by its American owners. It took the form of a Soviet-style communique in the basement of page 4, as obscure a spot for major news as any in the paper, with the possible exception of ‘Commercial Property’, what’s left of it. But there is an explanation for the Herald’s extraordinary lapse of editorial judgement and it turns out to be the usual one: newspapers, which thrive on other people’s bad news, are always strangely reticent about reporting their own. The redundancies apply to the Herald itself.
The official communique is full of hollow cliches from someone called Tim Blott (‘managing director’), who promises ‘an efficient operation fit for the 21st century’ and predicts ‘a bright new future…producing vibrant and relevant newspapers’. Let us overlook (though not completely) the fatuous nature of these assurances, straight from the Gordon Brown phrasebook of modern communication, and examine this bright new future of vibrancy and relevance. The facts are that, after 226 years, the Herald will no longer have its own editor (at least in any meaningful sense) or its own dedicated staff of journalists, that the editorial teams of the Herald, the Sunday Herald and the Evening Times are to be merged into one amorphous hack-like lump, and that the luckless Donald Martin is to oversee all three as ‘Editor-in-Chief’.
Point 1: editors-in-chief, responsible for all the newspapers in a stable, never work: they are traditionally the last refuge of managements in dire trouble. But that is the least of the brutality imposed yesterday on a venerable Scottish institution. The notion that the journalistic skills required for a tabloid evening paper, a more reflective Sunday title and a broadsheet daily are somehow routinely interchangeable, capable of producing that vibrancy and relevance demanded by Mr Blott, is born either of ignorance about the nature of journalism, or financial desperation, or a mixture of both. This disastrous recipe will be destructive of ability, morale (very low, even before yesterday) and quality.
The closure of the Sunday Herald or the Evening Times would be no more than regrettable, but the Herald’s fate is of national importance, particularly since its Edinburgh rival, the Scotsman, has converted to a tabloid format and moved out of the mainstream of Scottish political thinking. The Herald is, or should be, the most influential voice in Scotland, reporting, investigating and commenting, holding a critical mirror to our small society. When Arnold Kemp was its editor – its last great editor – between 1981 and 1994, that is precisely the vital role the Herald fulfilled. The paper under Kemp was one of the best in Britain. It had a wonderful team of journalists, a few of whom are still around, wondering anxiously about their future. It had vitality and integrity. It spoke for Scotland.
The difference now is that it speaks, not for Scotland, but for its distant owners. The paper’s circulation has declined sharply as English competitors have taken advantage of new technology and challenged it on its own territory, while ad revenue is suffering badly from a combination of the internet and the recession. A management committed to ‘a bright new future’ would have invested boldly in the paper, giving it the resources to fight off these challenges. Instead, the Herald has been allowed to become a sad shadow of what it was even 15 years ago. The failure is not one of journalism. The paper has been so starved of resources that it is now enduring death by a thousand cuts.
So here is the most remarkable paradox: at a time of profound political and constitutional change, a process by no means complete, when brave, rigorous, independent thinking is so urgently required, the future of our greatest newspaper is in doubt, its destiny to be determined thousands of miles away, its finest journalists reduced to applying for their own jobs. I do not much care what happens to the Bank of Scotland. It’s only money, after all, that and the hurt pride of the Edinburgh establishment. The fate of the Herald is the bigger story. But don’t expect to read about it in the Herald.
WEEKEND
INBOX
STOP PRESS
Kenneth Roy on the uncertain future of a great newspaper
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THE POLITE SOCIETY
I. Mick North is nice
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II. Walter Humes is not very nice
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THE END OF THE ROAD
Islay McLeod
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Which one is the great dictator?
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The Scottish Reviewers
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