Scottish Life Needs These Papers; Iain Macwhirter says there's more

AS a rule, columnists should never write about the papers they work for. How can you be objective about something with which you are so personally identified? But this is no time for ethical niceties. The Sunday Herald, a publication which I joined at its birth and which I regard as more than just a newspaper, is up for sale. At the very moment when it has finally established itself not only as a formidable vehicle for political debate and cultural expression, but also as a viable and solid commercial proposition, the Sunday Herald's future has been tossed onto the roulette wheel. It is up to all of us to try to prevent it landing on the wrong colour.

Be under no illusions. There are organisations who would purchase The Herald and Sunday Herald simply to emasculate the former and extinguish the latter. Others would reduce it to the role of a parochial news sheet. Others still would reduce it to the status of a regional satellite under editorial direction from London. This must not happen.

Of course we have to recognise commercial reality. A newspaper is also a business, with a price on its head. Anyone with enough cash can buy their way into public life by taking over a publication like this and using it as a megaphone for their own prejudices. But we don't have to make it easy for them. If the much-vaunted Scottish civil society means anything at all, then now is the time for it to make itself heard. Scotland is a small country, but we don't have to roll over.

The Scottish Media Group has come in for its share of criticism for putting its profitable titles up for sale. But what SMG cannot be criticised for is its commitment to editorial freedom. In 1996, when the group bought The Herald and Evening Times, its executives promised that they would not look over their editors' shoulders. They have been as good as their word. It is essential that whoever takes over the titles exercises similar restraint.

That may seem a triumph of hope over experience. It is very difficult to force proprietors to stick to promises of editorial freedom. Recall how Rupert Murdoch cast aside solemn and binding agreements with The Times and Sunday Times in 1981. But SMG has shown that it can be done. Their last service to these titles would be to ensure that the next owners are locked into a copper-bottomed commitment to maintain editorial independence.

We have seen how concentration of ownership in the hands of proprietors like Rupert Murdoch has perverted UK political culture by giving narrow-minded views too broad a platform. Number 10 walks in fear of News International. Concentration of media power in too few hands can make democratic governments bend their knees to unelected proprietors who don't even live in or near the country whose government they seek to influence. The Scottish political classes would do well to reflect upon that in the next fortnight as the potential buyers of The Herald and Sunday Herald emerge.

I say again: this is more than just a newspaper. Were the Sunday Herald to lose its distinctive character it would severely damage Scottish political culture. We would have a monochrome "quality" press offering a collection of received right-wing opinions that the Scottish people have time and again rejected at the ballot box.

Scotland desperately needs a diversity of opinion. We just cannot afford for another light to be extinguished. Free newspapers are essential for the proper functioning of any democracy, but they are vital for Scotland at this key moment in its history. Scotland has its own national parliament, but lacks a national media. Sections of the press have an agenda distinctly hostile to home rule. That needs to be balanced by papers that, while critical, are not blindly prejudiced against everything the Scottish parliament tries to do and only seek to rubbish and reduce it.

Holyrood may lack many formal powers over the press (though if you read the Scotland Act you will find no mention of the print media in the list of matters reserved to Westminster, only broadcasting) but its elected members possess considerable moral influence. A clear expression from Scotland's top politicians would send a message to potential buyers that attempting to turn the Sunday Herald into a clone of their own organs could be difficult and costly. MSPs could also lobby opinion in Westminster. Scottish Labour MPs may not always like what we say, but they should consider what may be said about them if The Herald and Sunday Herald fell into the wrong hands.

But it is not just a question of exerting political pressure. There is a very solid commercial case for maintaining the Sunday Herald as it is. The Sunday Herald has stood its ground in one of the harshest and most competitive newspaper markets in the world by being itself: independent, intelligent, irreverent and Scottish. It has avoided the many pitfalls of parochialism and triumphalism which have so disfigured Scottish public life. It is not the property of any one political party. The Sunday Herald is a serious Sunday newspaper that makes no apologies for itself, and welcomes comparison with UK titles. At a time when many things are going wrong in Scotland, the Sunday Herald is one of the things that has been going right.

But the surest way to send it directly to the graveyard of long- lost mastheads would be for its new owners to try to alter the culture of the paper. It has been robustly non-party political in a non-party age, but it has always known where its heart lies. It has assembled a group of journalists who subscribe to its outlook and who are expected to think independently and avoid party tramlines. They are the paper.

To use market-speak, the Sunday Herald "brand" is so closely tied up with the people who write and edit it that it simply could not survive an editorial coup d'etat. All that would be left would be an empty vessel, without writers and increasingly without readers. And this is a pretty hostile sea. In the wrong hands the Sunday Herald, instead of consolidating its market and advertising success, could be sunk in six months.

As I have said before, columnists should never write about their own papers, but I cannot help recalling when I joined this project back in the summer of 1998.

It was still a slightly crazy idea in editor Andrew Jaspan's head. I don't know to this day if he really believed that he could do it.

Everyone told me I was off my head to leave the Scotsman for this reckless venture; there hasn't been a successful Sunday newspaper launched in Britain for decades. Everyone said it would last a year at the very most.

Well, the Sunday Herald is now three and half years old, and on course to become profitable in 2004, according to the UK Press Gazette. It took Scotland On Sunday 10 years to break even. It is a tribute to Andrew Jaspan and his small but dedicated team that they have achieved the impossible. The very least we can do is try to prevent the Sunday Herald being thrown out by philistines who understand little about Scotland and care even less.

Copyright 2002
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