http://www.stewart-kirkpatrick.com/souralba/so-farewell-then-scotsman-editor-number-9/ Stewart Kirkpatrick on journalism, Scotland, the net Sun, 11 Apr 2010 22:51:12 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.2.1 http://www.stewart-kirkpatrick.com/souralba/so-farewell-then-scotsman-editor-number-9/comment-page-1/#comment-293 Alastair McKay Thu, 26 Feb 2009 10:03:59 +0000 http://www.stewart-kirkpatrick.com/souralba/?p=1719#comment-293 I agree with everything that you say, but it's worth bearing in mind that The Scotsman declined massively before anyone had heard of the internet. The problem pre-dates the Barclay Brothers. But in the last ten years, the significant change is the rise of the Daily Mail's Scottish edition. And there is a broader question, which my therapist would advise me not to get into, about the terrible parochialism of the Scottish media, which is bound up with petty nationalism, and which results in papers which over-celebrate mediocrity in the mistaken belief that this will excite a local readership. When I started at the Scotsman, the then-editor told me that there used to be a map of Scotland on the wall of the office of the old Scotsman weekly: at the top of the map was the legend "The World". That may have worked in 1960. It doesn't work now. I agree with everything that you say, but it’s worth bearing in mind that The Scotsman declined massively before anyone had heard of the internet. The problem pre-dates the Barclay Brothers. But in the last ten years, the significant change is the rise of the Daily Mail’s Scottish edition. And there is a broader question, which my therapist would advise me not to get into, about the terrible parochialism of the Scottish media, which is bound up with petty nationalism, and which results in papers which over-celebrate mediocrity in the mistaken belief that this will excite a local readership. When I started at the Scotsman, the then-editor told me that there used to be a map of Scotland on the wall of the office of the old Scotsman weekly: at the top of the map was the legend “The World”. That may have worked in 1960. It doesn’t work now.

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