Who is the real
Romney? We have
still to find out
Stalinism is alive
and well on the
Glasgow underground
The
death
of depth
Chris Holligan
says that deep reading
is becoming a thing of
the past. We’ve all
gone shopping
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Lockerbie
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The Cafe
The Cafe is our readers’ forum. Send your contribution to islay@scottishreview.net
Today’s banner
Within a few hundred yards of Commonwealth House, Glasgow
Photograph by
Islay McLeod
The nostalgic,
emotionally indulgent
editor of SR
Alasdair McKillop
Kenneth Roy’s article ‘My plan for saving a great Scottish newspaper’ is a complete emotional indulgence written for the journalistic community. Edinburgh is a ‘broadsheet city’ begs the question – what the hell is a ‘broadsheet city’. The sad fact is that the Scotsman has been in decline for years as has the Herald. Both newspapers are poorly written, lost their way and have failed to properly compete in the dawning age of electronic newspapers. It has nothing to do with their format but everything to do with the quality of the product in a declining market.
Now that Kenneth Roy has indulged himself in navel study could I suggest he moves on to what he is quite good at – exposing some of the warts of Scottish society.
Gordon Craig
Two things strike me about Kenneth Roy’s idea ‘to save the Scotsman’. Firstly, I think he’s unfairly dismissive of the Barclay Brothers. While the pair have long struck me as behaving like second-rate James Bond villains, they did do some good at the papers.
They reversed the flow of cash away from Scotsman Publications that had occurred under their previous owners. They invested in additional national, international and financial journalism because, quite rightly, they recognised that the real threat to the Scotsman’s sales came not from the Herald in Glasgow but national UK newspapers like the Guardian, the Times and the Telegraph.
OK, I admit I was unhappy when the Barclay brothers appointed Andrew Neil as overall head honcho, but I nevertheless applauded their clear desire to turn the Scotsman into a national UK newspaper with the rather special USP of it not being based in London. The very idea of a London edition of a Scottish newspaper always put a smile on my face.
In the end, of course, the brothers found it far quicker and easier to buy an existing national newspaper – the Telegraph – than to build one up from scratch. While I don’t forgive them for selling the Scotsman to Johnston Press, the state of the industry meant that there wasn’t exactly a serious alternative.
Secondly, Kenneth’s dream of relaunching the Scotsman as ‘a modern broadsheet’ strikes me as a slightly sad exercise in nostalgia, all the more ironic given that he now edits an online publication. Edinburgh may well be a broadsheet city, but up-and-coming generations of potential news consumers – sorry, is that too commercial a term? – don’t care about print format. The only newspaper most kids read nowadays is Metro, and that’s only because – like the internet – it’s free and readily available.
Like Kenneth, I too have a dream of a Scotsman that’s forthright and with a firm editorial purpose. Unlike Kenneth, my Scotsman features a well-financed, independent, trust-owned Scottish-based news gatherer that publishes news, views and reviews through a host of media: web, tablet, mobile and print. Sadly, though, I don’t think my dream’s any more likely to happen.
Paul F Cockburn
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