Paperless news
Newspapers have been shedding readers at an alarming pace recently, with many going online for their news and comment. Venerable old titles have also been shedding journalists.
Put those two factors together, and you could expect to find journalists setting up news websites. So it is that several names familiar to readers of The Scotsman will be launching a new Scottish newspaper on Monday.
As newspapers go, this one won't be top heavy with news, and nor will it involve the paper industry greatly.
The idea is to focus on analysis rather than news takes on developing stories. It's not seeking to be comprehensive, instead focussing on areas where it has reporting and writing strength.
And every month or so - perhaps every quarter - the team will produce a printed version, including its best articles and more besides.
Heritage and outdoors
Those areas of strength are to include politics, with Hamish McDonell, who left The Scotsman last year, and Robert McNeil, who wrote a much-read Holyrood sketch for the paper. He's going to revive that online.
Jennifer Trueland was health correspondent in print, and takes that online as well. Entertainment and music is to be covered by John McKie, former editor of Smash Hits and Q. There will also be coverage of heritage, outdoors and an overseas element.
Despite the number of names, it's being done with a tiny core staff and very little start-up funding - only editor Stewart Kirkpatrick, who was head of scotsman.com, plus technical and marketing directors, at the website-building consultancy they already run.
It's not easy to make money out of news. Their target is to get around a tenth of the page imprints of The Scotsman, which has led both the Daily Record and The Herald in its online readership. That can bring in some advertising, but sponsorship is more likely to be the key to making such a project viable.
How do you read it? Well, you can't. Not yet anyway. The site is up there somewhere, but they're not saying what the name is yet, and without that, there's not much chance of finding it.
Subscription System
The launch, on Robert Burns' birthday, happens to coincide with the 193rd birthday of The Scotsman itself. And although it has limited funding, the new venture says much about the challenge to find a new business model for old news organisations.
Today sees the New York Times starting to charge. One of the News International papers controlled by Rupert Murdoch - a small one in Massachusetts - is trialling a subscription system, ahead of a target date for the empire going fully paid-for in March.
The relatively good news for Scottish newspapers is that the precipitous declines of the past few years have stabilised in the past year, at least to the extent that they're falling at much the same rapid rate as the rest of the UK market. It's cold comfort.
Hullo, I'm Douglas Fraser, and I'm business and economy editor at ´óÏó´«Ã½ Scotland. Welcome to my blog, where you can read my take on money matters, viewed from a Scottish perspective.
Comment number 1.
At 21st Jan 2010, handclapping wrote:Douglas
I subscribe to ft.com as it produces "news" that I want to read. I would be interested in a "Scottish" paper that was not a rehash of Labour Party press releases and would subscribe to it too. It's up to the editor but judging from the comments on your colleague Brian Taylor's blog there does seem to be some mileage in an unbiased Scottish paper. The SNP does deserve some credit but it also needs some principled opposition, which it is not getting in Holyrood.
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Comment number 2.
At 22nd Jan 2010, macgilleleabhar wrote:If it is the usual diet of Unionist piffle we are experiencing now from the MSN it will go down like a lead balloon,but if it has a reasonably balanced and topical content it should grow to be an interesting and popular web visit. I hope so.
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Comment number 3.
At 22nd Jan 2010, Alba4eva wrote:I just read the article on page 2 of the Daily Record regarding Iain Gray's bout with Alex Salmond over Balmoral pathways (I read it in the pub after work, I certainly dont buy that rubbish).
From the dictionary, Journalism is described as...
"Writing that reflects superficial thought and research, a popular slant, and hurried composition, conceived of as exemplifying topical newspaper or popular magazine writing as distinguished from scholarly writing: He calls himself a historian, but his books are mere journalism."
As I saw from watching FMQ's and then reading the Daily Record article,
basically the unionist press take this dictionary description as meaning they can write any old rubbish.
Problem is, for the unionists at any rate, is that your ramblings have to be popular and all the evidence suggests that the unionist press are out of touch with the movemnt of the people.
Personally, I lost all respect for the media long ago, these comics really do talk she-height!
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Comment number 4.
At 22nd Jan 2010, Gallach wrote:Interesting approach, which I will read with interest, but in some small way its simply following Kenneth Roy's Scottish Review, expect he started out as a print mag, and then went on-line.
The fascinating thing about Roy's approach is he is mixing proper investigative journalism (the key exposes that the Herald and Scotsman have run the past few months on Public Sector pay, NHS consultants rewards, and public sector bodies looking to influence parliament through lobbying, all were researched and broken by SR - and then shamelessly plagiarised by the Scottish MSM), with blogging - unpaid guest columnists - paid for by sponsorship (Become a friend of SR!)
I rarely buy print papers these days, as I get all my news on-line, and my comment, but especially as the printed media is either irrelevant to my needs and interests (anything published south of the border) or insults my intelligence (the Scotsman and sadly the Herald).
But I do miss newsprint, and the quality writing.
Bring back Business AM is all I can say......
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Comment number 5.
At 23rd Jan 2010, Florence wrote:Hamish Macdonnell eh? Decamped from The Scotsman and now writes for the Daily Mail but his articles are oh so tedious. A relentless stream of vitriol on the SNP (he's obsessed with them) and two or three weeks ago he tried his hand at satire. Big mistake. He hasn't got what it takes. Fit only, as I wrote to the Mail, as a scriptwriter for the Chuckle Brothers. Was hoping we might get some professional and impartial reporting or "analysis". No chance of that if Macdonnell has anything to do with it. Disappointing.
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