A week is a long time at the Scotsman

Such has been the tumult in recent weeks at The Scotsman Publications Ltd (TSPL), it is remarkable that a paper has made it out the door every day.  The changes have not, though, been confined to the Scotsman, Scotland on Sunday and Edinburgh Evening News, but extend to all Johnston press holdings.

Ashley Highfield, appointed Chief Executive of Johnston Press in July, has set out his strategy for survival and it involves even more tumult and upheaval.

First step has been to flatten the management structure.  February saw the first stirrings of this with senior executives of parts of the holdings put on gardening leave and ultimately, made redundant.  At the same time, the MD of TSPL, Andrew Richardson, was appointed MD of all the Johnston Press holdings in Scotland.  This process culminated in the removal of John McLellan from his role as Editor-in-Chief of the Scotsman and its sister papers, and cue a public outpouring of indignation and sentiment (did John McLellan ever know how much his staff loved him so?!) from the papers’ journalists.  Incidentally, McLellan was one of three senior executives to go.

Eyebrows might have been raised by many at the Scotsman winning Newspaper of the Year at the Scottish Press Awards last week, but the newspaper family is a sentimental one. This award was the equivalent of a group hug, a solidarity gesture and as a kind of good luck charm to prevent the rot extending to others.

Some of the other changes coming won’t actually affect the Scotsman or Scotland on Sunday.  Johnston press is redesigning and relaunching most of the group’s newspapers.  I’m not a newspaper person but this sounds like maximising output from the content system invested in a while ago, by creating templates and sharing non-local content across titles more efficiently. It also means creating a single unit price for similar products.  Such harmonisation is long overdue and will raise the profit margins overnight on some publications.  The pilot area is the North of England where some dailies will also become weekly papers.

Implementation of the digital strategy will surely involve TSPL.  Highfield aims to grow audiences (not readers, note) by being “local, social and mobile”.  There will be more ipad apps for example, and mobile content to reach a younger generation currently bypassing newspapers for news.  This strategy will also create vertical content businesses, grouping content by genre (football, gardening etc) so that it can be accessed in one place.  Frankly, some of this is so basic in marketing terms, it’s remarkable that it hasn’t happened yet.

Clearly, once this process is complete, more jobs, particularly at editorial level will go.  You don’t need individual editors for newsprint and digital versions of every local paper, especially when the design and production processes are shared.  Traditionalists with inky fingers may despair but it is the way of the future.

There is also comfort to be had in that this is a strategy for growth.  It is about maximising profit, cutting costs and increasing revenue, while investing to reach wider audiences.  The crucial link in the chain is content.  More journalism, not less should result, but it will be different journalism.  All this might be bringing some at TSPL out in hives, but they would do well to get with the programme and work to put their papers ahead of the change process.

Kenneth Roy at the Scottish Review might envision a back to the future approach to rejuvenate the Scotsman, but such nostalgia is unhelpful.  The newspaper industry in Scotland and elsewhere must change or die.  What Highfield is setting out represents a major shift in culture, one that has largely been resisted by the industry in Scotland.  Where Roy is right, though, is that the Scotsman (to a lesser extent, Scotland on Sunday) has lost its way, in terms of its purpose and its direction.  Politically, its editorial line has become increasingly brittle:  how else to explain the contest to produce an independence-bashing front page splash daily?

Being so out of step with the political zeitgeist overshadows the fact that actually, the paper is producing outstanding comment and analysis on political and public issues.  The range of voices provided daily is impressive and has become essential reading for the burd.  It also masks the rest of the newspaper’s strengths – decent domestic and international news coverage coupled with innovative and solid lifestyle, sport and other content.  What is missing is a sense that the Scotsman is happy with its place in our world  – resolving this, so that it and Scotland on Sunday better reflect the political mood of the nation, is vital if Highfield’s audience growth strategy is to be realised.

Highfield is a businessman operating in a media universe: he can only do so much to fight for the survival of Johnston Press, and in particular TSPL.  This is only the start, not the end of the process of change.  Sadly, there will be more jobs going, but there is also the opportunity to create new jobs.  And if those journalists currently employed at TSPL want to have a future, they need to get their heads around the changes coming and fast.  Best of all, they need to work with their company to deliver.  No matter how many platforms, templates and audiences, the key to success is still content:  “brands are nothing without content, content is nothing without investment” noted Bill Jamieson sagely at the Scottish Press Awards.

He also reminded (to a standing ovation apparently) the assembled throng that “words are our gift, words are the mission of our life“.  Such a noble sentiment, though, is worthless without places to lay those words nor readers to savour them.

Scotsman’s shocking distortion of sleaze scandal

Another government, another sleaze scandal.

And we all roll our eyes wearily and say we expected no better from the Millionaires Club who just gave their wealthy pals a big tax boost.

This is a scandal created and set in Toryland.  £250k for three courses with Dave and Sam.  Nice to see the PM’s wife thrown in to seal the deal.

So how come the headline screaming from pages 4 and 5 of today’s Scotsman is “Sleaze:  dinner with SamCam and “mad Scotsman” Salmond“?  It is a gross distortion of what the report and story is actually about.

This headline suggests that the sleaze scandal involved the First Minister directly, that somehow Alex Salmond was complicit in this, that somehow – inexplicably – he had cut a deal with Cameron to get on this nice little earner.  The mind boggles, frankly.

But it is utterly wrong.  How Scotland’s First Minister ended up embroiled in this saga is because Peter Cruddas, the Conservatives’ former co-Treasurer, who was caught in the sting offering access to the Prime Minister in return for a six figure sum, was trying to impress his erstwhile donor.  In order to prove his credentials and his ability to mix it with the toffs at the top of the Tory party, Cruddas was caught on camera joshing that he and the Prime Minister had “jokingly referred” to Alex Salmond as “the mad Scotsman“.

Rightly, the FM has written to the PM suggesting that he explain himself.  Such behaviour and name-calling is unbecoming – or at least, getting found out is what is problematic.  This throwaway remark might just get David Cameron into a whole lot more bother, and rightly so.  If he thought of trying to make this one go away quickly, he reckoned without the tenacity of an SNP Government which never knowingly undersold the opportunity to remind the Scots of the awfulness of thon yins at Westminster.  Frankly, if this is how they think and talk about our First Minister in private, then they deserve all they get.

But it is the fact that editorially, the Scotsman chose to use the opportunity of Alex Salmond being mentioned in dispatches to attempt to give the impression that this episode of sleaze involved the First Minister.  How sly.

Ultimately, no party has completely clean hands on the matter of political donations.  The SNP had its knuckles rapped for auctioning dinner at Holyrood with the FM as a fundraiser.  A seemingly innocuous little ruse to raise money created the perception rather than the reality of sleaze.  In truth, only the most ardent SNP supporter would see this as something worth parting with hard cash for.  In years of relying utterly on private donations, this is the only episode to blot the SNP’s copybook.  Labour, Lib Dems and the Conservatives should be so lucky.

Despite vigorous attempts by them – especially Labour – to join the dots between Brian Souter’s largesse and his business and personal interests, they have failed.  Simply, because they cannot be joined.  What the muck-rakers have failed to realise is that Souter was a donor and supporter long before the SNP became fashionable.  The sneering at his offer in the 2011 election campaign to donate half a million pounds if ordinary members could match it pound for pound ignored the fact that match it they did.  And then some.

The truth about SNP funding is much more prosaic:  there are very few large cash donors and the success of its fundraising efforts in recent years owes much to making a virtue out of necessity.  When no one would touch the party with a bargepole, it relied solely on Obama-esque fundraising, gathering in lots of little amounts from its members.  Long before it became fashionable, small schemes spread throughout the party were initiated to spread the pain and maximise the gain.

Having never had to rely on big sums, it learned to make do with lots of little amounts instead – unlike the other parties, who have struggled when big funding streams have dried up.  Up to their necks in hock to their overdrafts, the major Unionist parties have become ever more desperate in their need to raise the readies.  Hence, this latest imbroglio.  Unless and until a shift is made to public funding of political parties, such scandals will continue to dog the image of politics on these islands.  And democracy will suffer.

But none of this excuses nor justifies the shocking attempt to embroil the First Minister in this episode.  The fact that the headline has disappeared from the online version of the Scotsman and been replaced with a more appropriate and indeed, truthful treatment speaks volumes.

No matter, the damage has been done.  A dwindling readership the Scotsman might have but still, over 30,000 people in Scotland opened their newspaper today to be given the impression that the First Minister was involved and that the SNP was also offering cash for access to major donors.

Nothing could be further from the truth.  Here’s hoping that appropriate missives have been dispatched from the party’s lawyers.

Old Firm’s dirty money talks

Is there any point in adding my own ruminations on the parcel bomb incidents this week?  In fulminating against something so heinous and incredulous, it is almost beyond comprehension?  Especially when others have and will condemn more articulately than I could ever manage.

But the point is this.  By staying silent, we condone.  By pretending we see, hear – and heaven forfend - speak no evil, by turning the other cheek while muttering not in our name, not in our ken, not in our neck of the woods, we allow sectarianism and bigotry, and its erstwhile partners, alcohol abuse and violence,  to continue unchecked and untrammelled.  Not relevant to us and how we choose to live our lives, see?  Oh, but it is.  For this is how ithers see us and it’s time we all saw Scotland in the entirety of its inglorious multi-coloured hues.

The very idea that someone could be moved to try to maim and kill others because they hate with every ounce of their being someone else’s religious and footballing affiliation – in 21st Century Scotland no less – requires all of us to make and take a stand.

As a football fan, I have experienced the deprivations of both sides of the Old Firm fan divide.  I’ve watched them urinate in people’s gardens, throw locals out of their pre-match pub in order to indulge in their vile, evil chanting, seen them drink in public and then smash the bottles in front of police horses, witnessed them vomiting over children in a fast food restaurant, been intimidated by sexual threat and innuendo while in the company of my own small child, watched a grown man lead songs of hate while carrying a toddler in his arms, and removed my terrified child from his season ticket seat when the torrents of abuse from interlopers became too much for him to bear.

And on each and every occasion, I have complained to the authorities.  To management, to stewards, to police.  And each and every time, my complaint was met with a shrug of the shoulders.  Not my problem, what can we do.  They think they are untouchable because they are.

Indeed, for years, a policy of containment and appeasement has applied.  Why has it taken UEFA to act when the SFA had powers aplenty to step in and tackle the clubs’ unwillingness and inability to address sectarian acts and activities by its fans?  Why has the SFA bowed to media and legal pressure to rescind punishments on players and club officials who have indulged in inappropriate conduct?  Why has it taken the police years to speak up and speak out about the horror show of violence played out in communities and homes on the occasion of every Old Firm fixture?  Why have licensing boards continued to allow premises that condone and encourage sectarian violence and hate crime to trade?  Why have internet forums, whose stock in trade is bile, been allowed to flourish?  And why oh why, have politicians – on all sides – waited until an election to say something, anything about any of it?

Because money- dirty money - talks. 

We have allowed the fear and loathing that constitutes supporting the Old Firm to expand into the monster it has so clearly become, because lots of people have made money out of it.  The clubs themselves, of course, rely on “impassioned fans” buying season tickets and all the tops and tat, following cup runs from beginning to end, and rampaging through Europe, at least until Christmas.  Pubs and clubs – at home and away – rub their hands with glee at the prospect of an Old Firm derby or of the visit of one half to their sleepy hollow.  The SFA when faced with top dollar legal representation whose fees enable them to drive a coach and horses through arcane procedure, have crumbled and fumbled every time.

Do you think those 1000 police officers on duty this Easter Sunday – however much they wish they were anywhere else – are doing it out of the goodness of their hearts?  Did newspaper proprietors groan or grin at the prospect of seven Old Firm fixtures in a season?

In fact, the only ones who haven’t heard the kerching of Old Firm hatred and violence are the politicians.  But what we have had in the last four years is a Parliament of fearties.  Feart to rock the boat, feart to upset one side or the other, feart to do the job we pay them handsomely to do.

There is absolutely no doubt that Alex Salmond has been at his most statesmanlike in the last week.  The tone, the content, the pledges have all been completely on the button.  He has vowed to free our country of bigotry and yes, it will take more than “one match, one season and one year”.

But the time for talking and summits is past, and now we must act.  We must all stop standing by and allowing a culture of sectarianism to flourish.  We must challenge the questioner when asked what school we went to.  We must shut down the forums of hate and prosecute the perpetrators and the facilitators.  We must start applying the aggravated offence of sectarian hate crime to every act of violence committed before, during and after an Old Firm match.  We must close down the hostelries that have built a trade on bigotry.  We must protect those families whose lives are blighted and bruised – literally – by every losing score.  We must end the public cash flow to footballing authorities and clubs which refuse to meet their obligations.  We must educate our children on tolerance and inclusion and inculcate a sense of pride in shared communities and faiths. 

We must launder this dirty money right out of our economy and we must remove this stain from our society for good.