The Scotsman

The Scotsman is a Scottish national newspaper, published in Edinburgh. Since August 16, 2004, it has been printed in compact format. Its sister Sunday publication, which remains broadsheet, is titled Scotland on Sunday. The Scotsman Publications Ltd also produces the Edinburgh Evening News and the Herald & Post series of free newspapers in Edinburgh, Fife, Perth and West Lothian.

The Scotsman has a daily circulation of around 59,000 [2].

History

The Scotsman was launched [3] in 1817 as a liberal weekly newspaper by lawyer William Ritchie and customs official Charles Maclaren in response to the "unblushing subservience" of competing newspapers to the Edinburgh establishment. The paper was pledged to "impartiality, firmness and independence". After the abolition of newspaper stamp tax in Scotland in 1850, The Scotsman was relaunched as a daily newspaper priced at 1d and a circulation of 6000 copies.

In 1953 the newspaper was bought by Canadian millionaire Roy Thomson who was in the process of building an enormous media empire. The paper was in 1995 bought by billionaires David and Frederick Barclay for £85 million. They moved the newspaper from its landmark Edinburgh office on North Bridge, which is now an upmarket hotel, to new offices on Holyrood Road, near where the Scottish Parliament Building was subsequently built. While under their ownership, controversial journalist Andrew Neil, a former editor of The Sunday Times, was publisher of the newspaper, in addition to The Business and The Spectator magazine.

Circulation has fallen dramatically since 2001 (faster than that of comparable Scottish titles) when, after a brief experiment with price-cutting, the editorial budget was slashed following the departure of many senior staff to the shortlived Scottish business newspaper Business AM. Recent additional cuts have seen the newspaper abandon original foreign news coverage with the closure of all the foreign bureaux established under the editorship of Alan Ruddock (1998-2000)and Tim Luckhurst (February - May 2000). High status columnists including Edward Pearce and Michael Portillo have been dropped. Attempts to rival the content of English newspapers appear to have been been abandoned in favour of less ambitious content and a substantially reduced editorial budget. The current editor, Mike Gilson, is the seventh to edit the newspaper since 1998. He started in the autumn of 2006, joining The Scotsman from The News, of Portsmouth.

In December 2005 it was announced that the paper, along with the other Scotsman Publications titles, was sold to Edinburgh-based newspaper group Johnston Press in a £160 million deal ending Neil's ten-year relationship with the newspaper. [4]

This takeover has resulted in a number of redundancies, rigorous cost control and continuing steep circulation decline, but the Scotsman remains profitable. [5] [6]

The Scotsman is sometimes jokingly referred to as The Hootsmon, particularly by journalists on its rival papers The Herald and the Sunday Herald.

View on the Scottish constitutional question

The Scotsman was a staunch supporter of Scottish devolution but has since been critical of the Scottish Parliament. The Scotsman is proud of its Scottish roots and its reputation as a Scottish national newspaper. For example it has been a strong opponent of the decision to abolish the Scottish Regiments.

While not currently explicitly aligned to any one political party it does take a vigorous Unionist stance.

See also

• List of newspapers in Scotland
• Scottish Daily News

Wikipedia information about The Scotsman This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the Wikipedia article "The Scotsman". It may not have been reviewed by professional editors (see full disclaimer). Help contribute to Americola and edit this article.