Sour Alba

I await with interest the launch of Herald Scotland.

I have not held back from criticising Johnston Press’s handling of my baby scotsman.com but I see signs that what the Herald are about to do will make JP’s decisions look like the greatest internet wisdom since Tim Berners-Lee saw a spider making a trap for flies. (Actually that might have been Robert the Bruce but you know what I mean.)

My pessimism is based on four warning signs:

1) A new URL: According to the excellent AllMediaScotland, the Herald plans to amalgamate its existing sites to create one seven-day operation. The key risk here is what happens to the current sites and, crucially, all the inbound links and search engine reputation they have built up over the years. If the old sites are junked then all those inbound links (vital for search engine reputation) will be lost.  Also, their very valuable search engine page ranks will be lost. Now there are ways and means of sending traffic to  new address. But even a 301 redirect can take months to take effect completely (thus losing valuable traffic and revenue). Also, given that the Herald and Sunday Herald’s web addresses have different structures a redirect might struggle.

But if they run the old and new sites in parallel then they face a massive search engine penalty for having duplicate content.

And if they launch the new URL without a ton of content, it will lose the huge benefit of the Heralds’ exisitng content.

In short, once you ‘ve got a URL stick with it. Sod rebranding.

2) Flash: The holding page is a search-engine-invisible Flash animation. An emphasis on “looking pretty” over “working properly” is no a good sign for whatever’s coming next.

3) Tag line: The marketing slogan for the new site appears to be: “Make it home”. That smacks of “make this your hompage”, which has been made hopelessly outdated by bookmarking, decent search engines and social networks.

4) The suggestion of charging. No, no, no, no. No matter what Rupert Murdoch says, the arguments for charging for content are all to do with what newspapers would like and not what readers will do. If you put your content behind a payment barrier, people will not pay you. They will go to a free site that offers content similar to yours. This is not an argument about quality – though the Herald’s has taken a big hit by cutting so many staff – but about how the customer behaves.

Now, all these indications might be off the mark but, for me, they point to worrying times ahead for Scotland’s online media.

The Scotsman is dying. So is The Herald. Here are some notes towards a plan to save them – and all newspapers. I’d like to see a consortium to put this into practice and save Scotland’s native, quality, national press for the nation. This isn’t born out of delusion but rather a few discussions I’ve had with like-minded senior journalists who believe that the money can be raised and that this is last chance to save these two titles.

Former Scotsman editor John McGurk has produced a fascintating investigation for the BBC on the future of the indigenous Scottish quality press. His conclusion is that it’s fucked.

When I was editor of scotsman.com (seven years, ten-fold increase in readerts, ahtankyew) John and I had our differences insofar as he would joyfully have strangled the online edition in its cot. But he has hit the nail on the head with this piece.

As well as exposing the guilty secret of plummeting sales at the Horrid and Hootsmon, John reveals that public sector advertising worth £47m will no longer be placed in the Scottish nationals. To put that the effects of that in layman’s terms: game over, man, game over.

Some thoughts occurred to me:

• If the Scottish public sector (and the politicians who run it) want native Scottish journalism they should continue to advertise with the Scottish nationals.
• They are under absolutely no obligation to do so, any more than readers are obliged to buy the papers.
• This is a lesson that the Scotsman and Herald have not learned. They are owned by companies (Gannet and Johnston Press) that insist on obscenely large profit margins and sacrifice quality to achieve them. Both papers are produced on a shoestring. It shows. The quality of journalism in both papers has fallen drastically. That’s why people don’t buy them. Why should they?
• At no point did John mention the Metro. On the 26 bus to the centre of Edinburgh people used to read the Scotsman but they now read the Metro – a low quality tabloid packed with wire copy. As that’s what Scotsman has become why should people bother paying money for it? (Oh and Johnston Press does not understand The Scotsman and their much-lauded digital strategy is deeply flawed – no matter how much Tim Bowdler clings to it when the share price falls. Again.)
• While Andrew Neil and John spoke movingly about the decline of Scottish papers they were strangely reticent about their own contribution. Brillo in particular has been loud in his condemnation of JP’s record at the Scotsman (correctly, by the way). However, the wirily coiffed one is not so hot on his own record. A listener phoning in to BBC Scotland’s Morning Extra to discuss John’s report had this to say: “These two were handed a quality paper and handed back the Beano at the end of their tenure.” McGurk had no answer to that but a joke about how healthy the Beano’s sales were. For years, I tried in vain at the Scotsman to discover the exact decline in sales when Neil was in charge but no-one could ever tell me. I do know that his stewardship was a wasted opportunity. He had the backing and the ambition to take the paper forward but his bloody true believer Thatcherite ideology got in the way and he alienated the readers and lost many, many fine journalists – mostly to Business AM.
• The Herald and Scotsman will merge soon. Both titles will survive as west and east coast editions of one product. I don’t think either Gannet or JP have the vision (or cash) to do that. As John said in his piece, PLCs are a bad bet for newspapers. I believe the future lies with trusts and family firms. My money’s on DC Thomson or the Guardian to buy and merge them. I have no reason for thinking this other than a feeling in my water.

Finally, readers still care. One lady on the phone-in lamented the demise of the Edinburgh Evening Dispatch. But despite feedback from readers, Charles McGhee of the Herald did not seem to take on board any of their criticisms. And that’s part of the problem too.

As I may have mentioned, my former project has undergone a redesign. I’ve been monitoring user responses to this via the comments on scotsman.com stories. Judging by the remarks on this story, the new design is not getting an enthusiastic reception. Here’s a sample of comments (remember, people who regularly comment on a site’s stories tend to be its core readership):

• More people are concerned about the dreadful new layout of the posting page than are able to comment on the story. Scotsman, this is your worst idea yet.
• What a joke! Newsquest will be falling about.the old format was much better, this change in not good at all
• It’s a bit mince n’est pas?
• I will report this site as unsuitable.
• I happen to know that Johnston Press got rid of the team behind the old Scotsman website. Not without a fight.
• I think we shoudl e-mail the Scotsman. Their site used to be the best among UK papers for usability, comment and ease of reading – this is now very poor, and worse than the Herald.
• I think this is knackered already lol
• I’m gone. This is unusable.
• SCOTSMAN ARE YOU LISTENING? THIS IS TERRIBLE AND YOU WILL LOSE ALL YOUR POSTERS IF YOU DON’T GO BACK TO THE WAY IT WAS. PLEASE!
• Oh, this site is just the worst now.

For me the most damning comment was this: “With the Herald you can at least see what you have written and use bold and italics.” The Herald website, which for so long lagged behind as an object of derision and pity, is now favourably compared to the dear old Hootsmon.

UPDATE

Yet more negative feedback in this piece entitled “New look for Scotsman’s leading website“. Here’s a flavour of the 46 responses:

• This is appallingly bad, the old design was a little dated perhaps, but much better than this. I thought we left behind this ‘my first homepage’ aesthetic with Netscape Navigator and dial up modems. Why does Johnson Press seem so concerted to make The Scotsman into little more than a regional newspaper of little importance?
• Not only are there still glitches in this new setup, but it is, to say the least, appalling. It is badly organised and quite feeble in comparison to the original. Did the Editor’s kids design it themselves, ot was it a school project?
• I’ll post as usual … but I don’t like this set-up. Not a bit of it! It’s now a generic newspaper look. How uniquely Scottish is that? Bad move Hootsmon … Your advisers want shot!!!
• Sorry, but I don’t like it very much; it’s almost identical to that of the Montrose Review, Brechin Advertiser and all the little locals which are printed by Johnson Press…adequate but not sufficient for a broadsheet such as The Scotsman…
• This website is awful. I suppose the new dreadful look matches the new dreadful standards of journalism under Johnston Press.

Ouch.

UPDATE II

Mad propz to allmediascotland.com for spotting yet more disgruntlement in this Edinburgh Evening News story. Here are some further highlights:

• This took “several months of preparation and planning”? Looks more like an afternoon’s work by a couple of drunk toddlers.
• As a web designer and project manager with around 12 years experience working with some of the largest blue chip companies in the UK I would give this effort 2 out of 10 (well at least it loads!)
• All three Scotsman publications online have glittered in a galaxy dominated by website giants such as BBC News , Guardian Unlimited and the New York Times – to cite just three worthy examples.The cliche that now leaps to mind is: “If it aint broke,why fix it”?
• This “new look” is an embarrassing step backwards. The old Scotsman websites had a simple and effective style. Quite classy almost. This new version is something else. I wonder if the design remit went like this:
  “Let’s implement something that looks like tawdry p!sh, indistinguishable from all the dross that’s out there. We want to run the Scotsman into the ground”.
  
• This new dub dub dub is shocking. Sack the person responsible. I would love to have some Evening News journalist contact me. I’d give them a piece of my mind, lets face it they cannot spell, thay have no proper grasp of grammar and they display an appaling lack of sense. Morevover where are all my letters going as I type them. I wondered if there was something amiss with my set at this end. Perhaps it is the ‘improvements’ made by the Johnson Pres people. Bring it on schoolboys, we fought a war that you might print your drivel. Merry Christmas.

Merry Christmas indeed. God bless us one and all.