The Scottish press in freefall?

It’s no secret that the Scottish media is going through a particularly tough time at the moment. In a sense, the past decade or so can probably be described as one long tough time. Job cuts have been piled upon job cuts. With sales plummeting, advertising revenues shrinking and the uncertain world of new media, the credit crunch is simply the icing on the cake.

Just yesterday it was announced that seventy jobs at Trinity Mirror will go once production of the Daily Record and the Sunday Mail merges into a single operation. That amounts to a quarter of editorial staff.

The state of the Scottish press was one of the subjects discussed on Newsnight Scotland yesterday (from 18:07). BBC Scotland’s business and economy editor Douglas Fraser (himself a former Herald journalist) noted that when The Herald and the Sunday Herald did something similar, more people requested redundancy than the Herald Group was actually looking for. On his blog he wrote:

It doesn’t say much about working at those heavier titles to find management has even more voluntary redundancies than they had wanted.

It’s worth remembering also that last year staff at those newspapers held strikes in protest at cuts. But it might not be just the Herald group of newspapers which has become a more difficult place to work. Costs at all newspapers are constantly being cut, but the newspapers are churning out just as much content as before. If anything, they are producing more content as a result of the 24 hour news cycle, and the need to keep websites constantly updated.

Today I have received an email informing me that North Lanarkshire Council has (presumably accidentally) published details of shortlisted candidates for the role of Head of Corporate Communications and Marketing. The job went to Stephen Penman, who used to be deputy editor of the Sunday Herald.

I am reluctant to elaborate too far further in case it annoys any of the people concerned. But the list has been published publicly, albeit without forenames, so you may be able to join the dots. My informant seems certain that the list contains a number of big names from various newspapers and public affairs firms.

No doubt the job of Head of Communications at a local council tends to attract candidates with a background in journalism and public affairs. But the calibre of these applicants is quite striking. There is an Associate Editor for the Scottish version of a major UK-wide newspaper; Group Content Editor for a major Scottish newspaper group; possibly Group Political Editor for a national newspaper group and a columnist for a Scottish newspaper. There is also at least one person, and maybe two, who currently work for private sector public affairs / PR companies.

Whatever you make of it, it has spurred someone to email me. He says: “Considering these names there is a rush to get out of the dead tree press and the private sector and into the safe harbour of the public sector.”

It’s pretty clear that the Scottish press is in turmoil just now. With devolution, there is more politics going on than there used to be, and it is the media’s job to keep on top of it. But ever since devolution, Scottish papers have increasingly struggled to make ends meet in the face of the internet revolution. The government is stronger, but the media is weaker — and that’s a dangerous situation to be in.

It seems likely that this town ain’t big enough for both The Scotsman and The Herald. Many see it as a foregone conclusion that both papers will be dead before long unless something radical is done. Recently Stewart Kirkpatrick, former editor of Scotsman.com, wrote a blog post on what such radical action may look like.

With the latest news coming from Trinity Mirror, it looks as though Scotland’s main tabloid newspaper will similarly struggle. It seems as though even in the best case scenario for the Scottish media, a lot more jobs are going to go and the Scottish press is going to be a lot weaker.

Yesterday morning I spotted a letter lying on the dining table. It was addressed to my father, who is a teacher. The letter was from the rector of his school. I read through it. It was quite a crap letter really. It really just said, “Thanks, and have a good holiday.” As if people normally expect their employers to write a letter giving them the bird for no good reason.

I am not sure if such letters are standard practice, but it did seem to be a bit of a waste to me. Not just a waste of money in terms of postage costs — but a waste of time of whoever wrote it, and a waste of time of all the people who had to read the rather banal letter.

I don’t know what my father thought of the letter. But if I was the recipient of it, I think I would have thrown it in the bin. And I would have thought to myself, “If they were really sincere about it, why did they not say that to my face?”

Reluctant Hero at Our Scotland is pretty impressed by a similar letter which has been sent out by Health Secretary Nicola Sturgeon to every employee of NHS Scotland.

From cleaner to consultant, the letter thanked us for efforts, particularly over the last week or so.

Now this is hardly anything worthy of the BBC running a special news bulletin on, but I think it is extremely significant. It shows, in my opinion, the massive difference between the SNP in government and the Labour Party in government.

I doubt that any Labour MSP ever wrote to a public sector employee to say “bollocks to the lot of you!” Given the banal nature of Nicola Sturgeon’s message, of course the first thing I did was work out how much it cost to send it.

The NHS Scotland website says that it employed approximately 158,000 people in 2006. This means that sending a letter to each NHS Scotland employee by second class would cost £37,920. Which is quite a lot more than an average annual income.

Of course, it is a drop in the ocean in terms of public spending. But I just thought I’d say, you know. It seems like a bit of a pointless letter to send. It might have given NHS employees a fuzzy feeling inside for half a day or so. But beyond that, I doubt it was really worth the thirty-eight thousand big ones to tell people something that is surely a given.

doctorvee

Archive: public-sector