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Hi Douglas, is it at all possible that one of the reasons people have turned away from the likes of the Record and the Herald might be the falling journalistic standards and institutional political bias at both publications?

That's certainly the reason why I don't buy them any more.

I'm always amazed that when we see coverage of Scottish newspapers and their financial problems, there is rarely any reference to the success story that is D. C. Thomson. They reported their annual figures in January with robust profits in excess of £60m. Perhaps Douglas you should maybe travel from the central belt and see how the pragmatic Dundee group get it right. Bottom line is that success in newspapers can be acheived. It's only a matter of time before Thomson stikes a deal to relieve Gannett or Johnston of their albatross titles or maybe even both.

Newspapers these days have become like daytime television, totally without substance. Three quarters of the content of most of the dailies is taken up with sychophantic nonsense about the " dolly bird stars " of one soap opera or another, holiday revues of holidays that only an MP could afford, houses that are way out of reach of most of the readers and fashion that is so over the top that no one is ever liable to buy or wear it. Even the news has now reached the stage where the headline bears absolutely no relationship to the story, the story itself is often inaccurate and the spelling and grammer in some of the dailies is akin to what is produced in primary seven essays.

Douglas? Any thoughts? Is everyone who criticises the standards in Scotland's newspapers wrong?

"Kaybraes" should be aware that "grammar" is spelt with an "a" before the final "r" and not an "e". Come on, even a P7 pupil -- or a newspaper sub! - would know this...

I stopped buying daily newspapers some time ago apart from the occasional broadsheet when I am traveling. Both The Herald and The Scotsman show such blatant political bias that I no longer trust them to report events accurately. I scroll through them on the web but I feel that they are horrendously out of touch with the political views of the electorate.

Murray Ritchie, when he left The Herald revealed the sort of commercial pressure that the paper had succumbed to from the Scottish (sic) Labour Party for attempting to report political news in a fair and balanced way. It seems to me that not much has changed since then.

At the time of the Glasgow East by-election it was widely reported that the outgoing MP was in substantial difficulties with his expenses. The Scottish media has made no visible attempt to report on this. In any other country this would be remarkable. In Scotland it is par for the course

I see that the Daily Record and the Sunday Mail are under strike threat from their journalists. Frankly I could not care less!I feel a sense of dark despair when I see supposedly intelligent customers buying The Record as their main source of news. and comment

I agree with Garbhein (6) above.

It is absolutely no surprise that the broadsheets in Scotland have plummeting sales.

I feel that the standard of journalism is very poor and often is simply cut and paste as many of the articles can be read verbatim on other sites, such as the ´óÏó´«Ã½.

There is little, or no depth, to many of them and the political basis is overwhelming, distorting the reality of present day Scotland.

It has got so bad that I don't even bother to pick up free copies at the airport when I am travelling on business trips and spend my time instead reading language or travel books.

Maybe some day I will return to papers like the Herald but, on current performance, it might be some time away.

As for the Scotsman....!

I stopped buying the Record because of it's political bias as well.
The Scotsman will go the same way too if it doesn't start to give a more politically fair view rather than being a mouthpiece for John Smith House

One other factor not touched on is the use of inflamatory behaviour in the sports sections, no doubt used to raise the hackles and sales; sadly for the newspapers it has has an opposite and quite detrimental effect. There are now internet organised boycotts of certain newspapers.

It would be better for the Newspaper industry if they returned to printing the news factually, accurately and without overt bias.

Douglas?

It's not complicated; newspapers are obsolete next to the Internet. The average Scot spends three hours a day online, though our fossilised political and media class scarcely seem to perceive this.

The inevitable claims of bias against nationalism killing the Scottish newspapers just don't hold water. The nationalist newspaper, the Scottish Standard, was a failure. Nor can it explain the strength of the Scottish editions of UK papers.

Hi Anaxim

You miss the point re nationalism and newspapers.

I want independence for Scotland.

I don't want a nationalist newspaper and I don't want a unionist paper.

By definition, both will be biased.

I want newspapers (and other media formats) that give me in-depth, unbiased comment from a Scottish viewpoint.

At the moment we have a hugely biased media against the SNP government and its simply not good enough.

Your first paragraph was on the button though.

Free speech overrules your desire to have an unbiased media. Anyone that wishes can start up a newspaper. Whether it's a commercial success is another matter.