Ex editors give the industry five years
Scotland’s newspaper industry will be dead in five years, two former senior editors from the Scotsman and the Herald claimed today.
Forty lost jobs at the Herald last week
Stewart Kirkpatrick, former editor of the Scotsman.com and Iain S Bruce, technology editor at the Herald for ten years, told The Napier that without urgent action, their former employers would disappear by 2013.
Their predictions come in the week that more than 200 journalists at The Herald, the Evening Times and the Sunday Herald were served with redundancy notices and invited to reapply for around 40 less jobs.
Stewart Kirkpatrick said:
‘The Herald and the Scotsman are both going the same way in trimming down their news teams as they try to be more cost effective. But this is just a knee-jerk reaction and does nothing to address the real problems. If they don’t change their business models and find ways to make money out of their online offerings fast, they will both be gone in 5 years.’
Kirkpatrick left the Scotsman.com last year after seven years at the helm and since then the Edinburgh-based paper has merged its sub-editing teams to make cut backs. Both the Scotsman and the Herald and Times Group have invested heavily in their web output in the last decade to try and combat dwindling readership. But without a clear idea of how to monetise online content, staff cut-backs have been unavoidable.
Iain S Bruce said:
‘Heavy job losses only serve to create weaker newspapers, as they eradicate their vital resource. Fewer people working at a newspaper makes for a weaker publication and this means even lower circulation. If they continue to scale back in this way, the quality Scottish Press will soon cease to exist.’
Politicians north of the border regard the survival of the two titles as vital to the future of their democracy. Cathy Peattie, member of the Cross Party Group on Culture and Media said:
“I’m really saddened by the news from the Herald. These job losses will only put more pressure on an already overstretched Scottish Press. And this is of extreme concern in our democracy.”
Herald and Times Group managing director Tim Blott himself acknowledged this point in his statement announcing the changes last week.
“We are committed to producing vibrant and relevant newspapers and web sites and see a bright future for The Herald, Sunday Herald and Evening Times and their digital versions. A strong indigenous press is vital for diversity of opinion and democracy in Scotland,” he said.
4 Comments
December 22, 2008 at 3:12 pm
[...] sees gloom for Scottish titles unless they learn to make money out of their digital offerings. Desktop Hack has quoted him: “The Herald and the Scotsman are both going the same way in trimming down [...]
December 22, 2008 at 5:19 pm
“The Herald, the Evening Times and the Sunday Herald were served with redundancy notices and invited to reapply for around 40 less jobs. …”
FEWER jobs please. And you talk about a decline in journalism?
December 24, 2008 at 9:30 am
Good piece, but the concern really has to go beyond that of the two broadsheets.
December 24, 2008 at 9:34 am
DesktopHack, couldn’t see any contact details for you but thought you might want to know that your link for Shaun Milne’s blog is wrong.
Shaun can be found at
http://milnemedia.typepad.com/
(I can be found at http://www.craig-mcgill.com if you are in the mood for new journalim/PR links
)