I’ve just hotfooted (hotfeet?) from BBC Scotland’s Politics Show where I chewed the fact about the future of Scottish papers. If you’re reading this before 1 March you can watch it on iPlayer. (I’m at 80 minutes in.)
I was pleasantly surprised to find myself agreeing almost totally with John McGurk about the net and the importance of “distinctive content”. He and I crossed swords many times over just these issues when he was managing editor at Scotsman Publications and sales figures loomed large in his mind.
Those figures have been brought into sharp relief by the departure of Mike Gilson through the revolving door of The Scotsman’s editor’s office.
On a personal level, I like Mike but it’s hard to be positive about his record.
He was parachuted in from a local newspaper in southern England. He was Johnston Press’s man. Like others at JP he can be accused of not understanding The Scotsman, thinking it was the Edinburgh Morning News. The paper is demonstrably poor. And, of course, sales collapsed to the tune of 14,000 sales.
However, this is far from the full story. Mike had many strong points. He was an enthusiastic editor and an imaginative journalist. He was the ninth to sit in the editor’s chair since I joined the paper in 1995. He was by no means the worst or even the second worst to occupy that bloodstained perch.
Those sales figures cannot be laid solely at Mike’s door. To support this assertion I would point to Johnston Press’s impact scotsman.com, which I edited for seven years. Thanks to the team I worked with, we built it up to be one of Google News’s top sites worldwide, a multi-award winner, 4 million users a month, blah, blah, blah.
But then JP got rid of the team, ditched the lovingly crafted site and imposed their own one, better suited to the Craphampton Argus than our huge international audience. Unique users have halved.
My defence of Mike is based largely on this. As JP’s short-sightedness did to the websites so it did to the resources that the editor of the paper had at his disposal.
And unsurprisingly when you cut costs, sales fall. Unfortunately, that process will continue under the new ubereditor, John McLellan. This is no reflection on John. He’s a very strong choice. A shrewd, instinctive news man, he has been at TSPL since shortly after the relief of Mafeking. He has a gut feel for the readers. And he has for a long time been the most web-friendly editor at Barclay Towers. Also in the editorial hierarchy he has Tom Little and Ian Stewart, two talented stalwarts who *gasp* have more than a passing acquaintance with the TSPL products.
If anyone can make the (much denied) seven-day model work in practical terms, it’s these guys. Former Marine Ian Stewart’s been shot at, getting subs to work an extra couple of shifts won’t be much of a trial. But in quality terms the move is a disaster – as is the Record’s similar move. Even Citizen Kane couldn’t save that situation.
It doesn’t take a genius to work out that making the product weaker does not make it more attractive to the customer.
