Sunday Herald
Encyclopedia
The Sunday Herald is a Scottish Sunday newspaper launched on 7 February 1999. The ABC audited circulation in April 2011 showed sales of 31,123.
From the start it has combined a centre-left stance with support for Scottish devolution. It has been highly critical of some of the politicians within the Scottish Parliament
, most notably former Scottish Conservative Party leader David McLetchie
.
, because the Glasgow
-based media group was losing advertising revenue to rival newspaper publishers every Sunday. In March 1998 the media company's board appointed Andrew Jaspan
, then the publisher and managing director of The Big Issue
and a former editor of Scotland on Sunday, The Scotsman
and The Observer
to examine the business case for launching a new Sunday title. In October 1998 SMG (now known as STV Group plc), which also owns the broadcaster STV, committed to putting £10 million ($18.7 million) behind the new paper's launch.
, novelist and TV entrepreneur Muriel Gray
and BBC
political commentator Iain Macwhirter
and designer Simon Cunningham. Other former BBC television and radio journalists who joined the title included Lesley Riddoch
, Torcuil Crichton and Pennie Taylor. A number of former Scotsman
and Scotland on Sunday
staff also joined the new paper, as did several journalists from The Big Issues Scottish edition.
The Sunday Herald was launched as a six section newspaper with the slogan "No ordinary Sunday" on 7 February 1999. The use of the word "fuck" in the first edition of the magazine alienated older and more conservative
readers, but the paper quickly won a following among more liberal-minded Scots. It also won a raft of awards for its journalism, design and photography, in the UK and internationally, and secured the former archbishop Richard Holloway
and On the Waterfront
scriptwriter Budd Schulberg
as regular contributors. Its web version gained a large readership in the United States because of its consistent anti-George W. Bush
and anti-Iraq War line.
was in serious financial trouble by 2002. The company decided to sell its publishing arm, whose assets included The Herald, Sunday Herald and Evening Times
and magazines including Scottish Farmer, Boxing News and The Strad and a public auction
, accompanied by a heated public debated, ensued.
When it looked like the right-wing Barclay brothers, owners of rival papers The Scotsman and Scotland on Sunday, were set to become the publishing group's owners, questions were raised in the Scottish Parliament
. Had Sir David and Sir Frederick Barclay and Andrew Neil
succeeded in acquiring the fledgling Sunday Herald, they would have closed it down to give a clear run to their own Scotland on Sunday title, and merged The Herald with The Scotsman. That their goals were anti-competitive was confirmed when an unsigned leader written by Jaspan making these claims went unchallenged. Determined to prevent the paper being acquired by tax exile
s with no sympathy for its centre-left ethos, Jaspan led a campaign to keep it out of their hands. This included lobbying senior Labour Party (UK)
politicians at their September 2002 conference in Blackpool
.
The campaign proved successful, with even the Financial Times
questioning whether it was right for the Barclay twins to have a monopoly of quality papers published in Scotland. The Sunday Herald and related titles were sold instead to Newsquest
(a Gannett company) in a £216 million ($414 million) deal. This was cleared by the UK Department of Trade and Industry in March 2003, partly because it was persuaded the papers would keep their editorial independence
under Gannett's ownership and because of Gannett's creation of a new Scottish division to run the acquired papers from Glasgow. The DTI report said: "We do not expect the transfer adversely to affect the current editorial freedom, the current editorial stance, content or quality of the SMG titles, accurate presentation of news or freedom of expression." The deal completed on 5 April 2003.
Jaspan resigned in 2004 to become editor of The Age
in Melbourne, Australia. Richard Walker was appointed as his successor. Walker, 50, a former production journalist on both the Daily Record and Scotland on Sunday who has a strong flair for impactful design, had been with the title since its launch and had served as deputy to Jaspan for five years.
Walker was behind the launch of the blog site Sundayheraldtalk.com in September 2006. Soon afterwards relations between management and staff deteriorated and trade union the National Union of Journalists
threatened strike action over a change to the timing of pay days, though this never materialised. The union was again enraged in April 2007 when the Sunday Herald's US owners declared they were looking for annual cost cuts of £3 million across the three papers in their Scottish stable. This was to be achieved through redundancies, the closure of sections (such as Sunday Herald magazine) and perhaps also merging The Herald and Sunday Herald into a seven-day publishing operation. The NUJ accused Tim Blott, managing director of Newsquest Herald & Times, of reneging on pledges over the maintenance editorial standards made to the Department of Trade & Industry at the time it purchased the newspapers in 2003.
, leader of the Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
, had abused taxpayers' money to pay for taxi fares for legal and party work. Hutcheon made use of the Scottish Freedom of Information Act to establish his case, which ultimately led to McLetchie resigning both as Conservative leader and as a partner in Edinburgh law firm Tods Murray.
the claimant, a footballer previously known only as CTB, was identified by publishing as its front page an image of Ryan Giggs
whose eyes are covered with a black bar which features the word "censored". The paper argued that injunction was not valid in Scotland and only applicable to England, however legal opinion suggests that the Scottish news outlet may be in breach an English injunction due to a House of Lords ruling in the 1987 Spycatcher
case.
From the start it has combined a centre-left stance with support for Scottish devolution. It has been highly critical of some of the politicians within the Scottish Parliament
Scottish Parliament
The Scottish Parliament is the devolved national, unicameral legislature of Scotland, located in the Holyrood area of the capital, Edinburgh. The Parliament, informally referred to as "Holyrood", is a democratically elected body comprising 129 members known as Members of the Scottish Parliament...
, most notably former Scottish Conservative Party leader David McLetchie
David McLetchie
David McLetchie is a Scottish politician, currently a Scottish Conservative and Unionist Member of the Scottish Parliament for the Lothian electoral region...
.
History
In early 1998 the Scottish Media Group (SMG), then led by chairman Gus Macdonald, decided to create a Sunday sister for its existing national morning title The HeraldThe Herald (Glasgow)
The Herald is a broadsheet newspaper published Monday to Saturday in Glasgow, and available throughout Scotland. As of August 2011 it had an audited circulation of 47,226, giving it a lead over Scotland's other 'quality' national daily, The Scotsman, published in Edinburgh.The 1889 to 1906 editions...
, because the Glasgow
Glasgow
Glasgow is the largest city in Scotland and third most populous in the United Kingdom. The city is situated on the River Clyde in the country's west central lowlands...
-based media group was losing advertising revenue to rival newspaper publishers every Sunday. In March 1998 the media company's board appointed Andrew Jaspan
Andrew Jaspan
Andrew Jaspan, a British journalist, was appointed in October 2004, as Editor-in-Chief of The Age, a broadsheet daily newspaper published in Melbourne, Australia. Prior to this appointment, he was the founder and editor of the Sunday Herald in Scotland from 1999 to 2004...
, then the publisher and managing director of The Big Issue
The Big Issue
The Big Issue is a street newspaper published in eight countries; it is written by professional journalists and sold by homeless individuals. It was founded by John Bird and Gordon Roddick in September 1991...
and a former editor of Scotland on Sunday, The Scotsman
The Scotsman
The Scotsman is a British newspaper, published in Edinburgh.As of August 2011 it had an audited circulation of 38,423, down from about 100,000 in the 1980s....
and The Observer
The Observer
The Observer is a British newspaper, published on Sundays. In the same place on the political spectrum as its daily sister paper The Guardian, which acquired it in 1993, it takes a liberal or social democratic line on most issues. It is the world's oldest Sunday newspaper.-Origins:The first issue,...
to examine the business case for launching a new Sunday title. In October 1998 SMG (now known as STV Group plc), which also owns the broadcaster STV, committed to putting £10 million ($18.7 million) behind the new paper's launch.
Jaspan's launch team
Jaspan assembled an impressive, if unorthodox, team including former Hue & Cry front man Pat KanePat Kane
Pat Kane is a Scottish musician, and half of the pop duo Hue and Cry with his younger brother Greg.Independently of Hue & Cry, lead singer Kane writes on politics and culture...
, novelist and TV entrepreneur Muriel Gray
Muriel Gray
Muriel Gray is a Scottish journalist and broadcaster.-Personal life:Gray is of partly Jewish ancestry...
and BBC
BBC
The British Broadcasting Corporation is a British public service broadcaster. Its headquarters is at Broadcasting House in the City of Westminster, London. It is the largest broadcaster in the world, with about 23,000 staff...
political commentator Iain Macwhirter
Iain Macwhirter
Iain Macwhirter is a Scottish political commentator, who has worked at both the UK Parliament and Scottish Parliament, presenting the BBC2 programmes "Westminster Live" and "Scrutiny".- Early career :...
and designer Simon Cunningham. Other former BBC television and radio journalists who joined the title included Lesley Riddoch
Lesley Riddoch
Lesley Riddoch is a British radio broadcaster and journalist who lives in Perth.-Early career:Lesley Riddoch was born in England in 1963, spent her childhood in Belfast then moved to Glasgow in 1973 where she attended a local fee-paying private school...
, Torcuil Crichton and Pennie Taylor. A number of former Scotsman
The Scotsman
The Scotsman is a British newspaper, published in Edinburgh.As of August 2011 it had an audited circulation of 38,423, down from about 100,000 in the 1980s....
and Scotland on Sunday
Scotland on Sunday
Scotland on Sunday is a Scottish Sunday newspaper, published in Edinburgh by The Scotsman Publications Ltd and consequently assuming the role of Sunday sister to its daily stablemate The Scotsman...
staff also joined the new paper, as did several journalists from The Big Issues Scottish edition.
The Sunday Herald was launched as a six section newspaper with the slogan "No ordinary Sunday" on 7 February 1999. The use of the word "fuck" in the first edition of the magazine alienated older and more conservative
Social conservatism
Social Conservatism is primarily a political, and usually morally influenced, ideology that focuses on the preservation of what are seen as traditional values. Social conservatism is a form of authoritarianism often associated with the position that the federal government should have a greater role...
readers, but the paper quickly won a following among more liberal-minded Scots. It also won a raft of awards for its journalism, design and photography, in the UK and internationally, and secured the former archbishop Richard Holloway
Richard Holloway
Richard F. Holloway is a Scottish writer and broadcaster and was formerly Bishop of Edinburgh in the Scottish Episcopal Church....
and On the Waterfront
On the Waterfront
On the Waterfront is a 1954 American drama film about union violence and corruption among longshoremen. The film was directed by Elia Kazan and written by Budd Schulberg. It stars Marlon Brando, Rod Steiger, Eva Marie Saint, Lee J. Cobb and Karl Malden. The soundtrack score was composed by Leonard...
scriptwriter Budd Schulberg
Budd Schulberg
Budd Schulberg was an American screenwriter, television producer, novelist and sports writer. He was known for his 1941 novel, What Makes Sammy Run?, his 1947 novel The Harder They Fall, his 1954 Academy-award-winning screenplay for On the Waterfront, and his 1957 screenplay for A Face in the...
as regular contributors. Its web version gained a large readership in the United States because of its consistent anti-George W. Bush
George W. Bush
George Walker Bush is an American politician who served as the 43rd President of the United States, from 2001 to 2009. Before that, he was the 46th Governor of Texas, having served from 1995 to 2000....
and anti-Iraq War line.
Sale to Newsquest
After having over-paid for acquisitions during the dot-com era, Scottish Media GroupSMG plc
STV Group plc is a Scottish media company. It is a constituent of the FTSE Fledgling Index. Originally formed as Scottish Television, it changed its name to Scottish Media Group in 1996 when it acquired Caledonian Publishing, owners of Glasgow-based newspapers The Herald and Evening Times...
was in serious financial trouble by 2002. The company decided to sell its publishing arm, whose assets included The Herald, Sunday Herald and Evening Times
Evening Times
The Evening Times is an evening tabloid newspaper published Monday to Saturday in Glasgow, Scotland.-History:The paper, an evening sister paper of The Herald, was established in 1876. The paper's slogan is "Nobody Knows Glasgow Better"....
and magazines including Scottish Farmer, Boxing News and The Strad and a public auction
Auction
An auction is a process of buying and selling goods or services by offering them up for bid, taking bids, and then selling the item to the highest bidder...
, accompanied by a heated public debated, ensued.
When it looked like the right-wing Barclay brothers, owners of rival papers The Scotsman and Scotland on Sunday, were set to become the publishing group's owners, questions were raised in the Scottish Parliament
Scottish Parliament
The Scottish Parliament is the devolved national, unicameral legislature of Scotland, located in the Holyrood area of the capital, Edinburgh. The Parliament, informally referred to as "Holyrood", is a democratically elected body comprising 129 members known as Members of the Scottish Parliament...
. Had Sir David and Sir Frederick Barclay and Andrew Neil
Andrew Neil
Andrew Ferguson Neil is a Scottish journalist and broadcaster.He currently works for the BBC, presenting the live political programmes The Daily Politics and This Week...
succeeded in acquiring the fledgling Sunday Herald, they would have closed it down to give a clear run to their own Scotland on Sunday title, and merged The Herald with The Scotsman. That their goals were anti-competitive was confirmed when an unsigned leader written by Jaspan making these claims went unchallenged. Determined to prevent the paper being acquired by tax exile
Tax exile
A tax exile is one who chooses to leave a country with a high tax burden and instead to reside in a foreign nation or jurisdiction which takes a lower portion of earnings. Going into tax exile is a means of tax mitigation or avoidance.-Legal status:...
s with no sympathy for its centre-left ethos, Jaspan led a campaign to keep it out of their hands. This included lobbying senior Labour Party (UK)
Labour Party (UK)
The Labour Party is a centre-left democratic socialist party in the United Kingdom. It surpassed the Liberal Party in general elections during the early 1920s, forming minority governments under Ramsay MacDonald in 1924 and 1929-1931. The party was in a wartime coalition from 1940 to 1945, after...
politicians at their September 2002 conference in Blackpool
Blackpool
Blackpool is a borough, seaside town, and unitary authority area of Lancashire, in North West England. It is situated along England's west coast by the Irish Sea, between the Ribble and Wyre estuaries, northwest of Preston, north of Liverpool, and northwest of Manchester...
.
The campaign proved successful, with even the Financial Times
Financial Times
The Financial Times is an international business newspaper. It is a morning daily newspaper published in London and printed in 24 cities around the world. Its primary rival is the Wall Street Journal, published in New York City....
questioning whether it was right for the Barclay twins to have a monopoly of quality papers published in Scotland. The Sunday Herald and related titles were sold instead to Newsquest
Newsquest
Newsquest is the third largest publisher of regional and local newspapers in the United Kingdom with 300 titles in its portfolio. Newsquest is based in Weybridge, Surrey and employs a total of more than 5,500 people across the UK...
(a Gannett company) in a £216 million ($414 million) deal. This was cleared by the UK Department of Trade and Industry in March 2003, partly because it was persuaded the papers would keep their editorial independence
Editorial independence
Editorial independence is the freedom of editors to make decisions without interference from the owners of a publication. Editorial independence is tested, for instance, if a newspaper runs articles that may be unpopular with its advertising clientele....
under Gannett's ownership and because of Gannett's creation of a new Scottish division to run the acquired papers from Glasgow. The DTI report said: "We do not expect the transfer adversely to affect the current editorial freedom, the current editorial stance, content or quality of the SMG titles, accurate presentation of news or freedom of expression." The deal completed on 5 April 2003.
Jaspan resigned in 2004 to become editor of The Age
The Age
The Age is a daily broadsheet newspaper, which has been published in Melbourne, Australia since 1854. Owned and published by Fairfax Media, The Age primarily serves Victoria, but is also available for purchase in Tasmania, the Australian Capital Territory and border regions of South Australia and...
in Melbourne, Australia. Richard Walker was appointed as his successor. Walker, 50, a former production journalist on both the Daily Record and Scotland on Sunday who has a strong flair for impactful design, had been with the title since its launch and had served as deputy to Jaspan for five years.
The Walker years
Walker took the Sunday Herald tabloid in November 2005 which brought a temporary uplift in circulation. Sales settled at 58,000 (source: Audit Bureau of Circulations), and readership at 195,000 (source: National Readership Survey). The week before the Sunday Herald was launched in February 1999, the Barclays's Scotland on Sunday sold more than 130,000 copies. This has since plummeted to 68,000.Walker was behind the launch of the blog site Sundayheraldtalk.com in September 2006. Soon afterwards relations between management and staff deteriorated and trade union the National Union of Journalists
National Union of Journalists
The National Union of Journalists is a trade union for journalists in the United Kingdom and the Republic of Ireland. It was founded in 1907 and has 38,000 members. It is a member of the International Federation of Journalists .-Structure:...
threatened strike action over a change to the timing of pay days, though this never materialised. The union was again enraged in April 2007 when the Sunday Herald's US owners declared they were looking for annual cost cuts of £3 million across the three papers in their Scottish stable. This was to be achieved through redundancies, the closure of sections (such as Sunday Herald magazine) and perhaps also merging The Herald and Sunday Herald into a seven-day publishing operation. The NUJ accused Tim Blott, managing director of Newsquest Herald & Times, of reneging on pledges over the maintenance editorial standards made to the Department of Trade & Industry at the time it purchased the newspapers in 2003.
Taxigate
In April 2006 the Sunday Heralds Scottish political editor, Paul Hutcheon, won both Political Journalist of the Year and Journalist of the Year in the Scottish Press Awards for articles revealing that David McLetchieDavid McLetchie
David McLetchie is a Scottish politician, currently a Scottish Conservative and Unionist Member of the Scottish Parliament for the Lothian electoral region...
, leader of the Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
The Scottish Conservative & Unionist Party is the part of the British Conservative Party that operates in Scotland. Like the UK party, it has a centre-right political philosophy which promotes conservatism and strong British Unionism...
, had abused taxpayers' money to pay for taxi fares for legal and party work. Hutcheon made use of the Scottish Freedom of Information Act to establish his case, which ultimately led to McLetchie resigning both as Conservative leader and as a partner in Edinburgh law firm Tods Murray.
Super Injunctions
On 22 May 2011, the paper became the first mainstream UK publication to name a person involved with a super injunction. In CTB v News Group NewspapersCTB v News Group Newspapers
CTB v News Group Newspapers is an English legal case between Manchester United player Ryan Giggs, given the pseudonym CTB, and defendants News Group Newspapers Limited and model Imogen Thomas....
the claimant, a footballer previously known only as CTB, was identified by publishing as its front page an image of Ryan Giggs
Ryan Giggs
Ryan Joseph Giggs OBE is a Welsh professional footballer who plays for Manchester United. Giggs made his first appearance for the club during the 1990–91 season and has been a regular player since the 1991–92 season...
whose eyes are covered with a black bar which features the word "censored". The paper argued that injunction was not valid in Scotland and only applicable to England, however legal opinion suggests that the Scottish news outlet may be in breach an English injunction due to a House of Lords ruling in the 1987 Spycatcher
Spycatcher
Spycatcher: The Candid Autobiography of a Senior Intelligence Officer , is a book written by Peter Wright, former MI5 officer and Assistant Director, and co-author Paul Greengrass. It was published first in Australia...
case.
See also
- List of newspapers in Scotland
- Scottish Daily NewsScottish Daily NewsThe Scottish Daily News was a left-of-centre daily newspaper published in Glasgow between 5 May and 8 November 1975. It was hailed as Britain's first worker-controlled, mass-circulation daily, formed as a workers' cooperative by 500 of the 1,846 journalists, photographers, engineers, and print...