Why we should support the petition from The Herald’s journalists

The decline and fall of The Herald is a disgrace and a tragedy. What was once the most respected and influential broadsheet in Scotland is fast being reduced by an asset-stripping management to the status of a local paper with a skeleton staff and a dwindling circulation.  As the great James Cameron observed when his beloved News Chronicle became defunct, the trouble is a poor circulation induced by clots.

The difficulties at The Herald matter hugely for Scotland and for our politics, regardless of party affiliation, at this critical stage in Scotland’s constitutional evolution. Without The Herald’s support for self-government in recent years Scotland would still be under direct rule from Westminster. Sure, the Herald is anti-independence but it still does support more powers for the Scottish Parliament. It has done that since the 1970s but its influence and respect are fast declining along with its sales which are now under 70,000, a fearful decline in the space of a few years.

What has brought this great Scottish institution to such a sorry state? When I joined the The Glasgow Herald in 1971 it was run by George Outram and Co, a Glasgow-based company. They were not great employers but compared with Newsquest, the crowd who run the paper now for their American owners, Gannett, they were angels. Gannett has a reputation in the industry for profiteering at the expense of editorial quality, and its subsidiary in the UK, Newsquest, likewise has a reputation for being the worst employer in British journalism. This explains why the National Union of Journalists has recently been in more industrial disputes with Newsquest than with any other management.

During my time with the Herald our paper was kicked around by big business interests, bought and sold, as one former editor put it, like a bull in a sale ring.  Outram was bought by Lord Fraser, the drapery magnate, and became part of his SUITs empire. His wayward son, Sir Hugh, lost the business largely through his gambling. Tiny Rowland of Lonrho notoriety bought the paper and, to his credit, rarely interfered with editorial content, being content just to rake in the huge profits. After young Sir Hugh died Rowland at least had the decency to turn to the dowager Lady Fraser, then still living in the family home in Mugdock, and consult her on the Herald’s future. Rowland respected the special affection Lady Fraser had for the paper. She approved a management buyout and with Liam Kane in the boardroom and the late, great Arnold Kemp in the editorial chair, the paper blossomed like never before.

When, during discussions about the Newsquest takeover, an MSP asked a senior political journalist (not from the Herald) what the paper had achieved in its great campaigning days, he was told: “You’re sitting in it,” The journalist meant the Scottish Parliament.

The Herald’s alarming decline began when the merchant bank which had put up the buyout money became oppressive in its demands for repayment. Eventually another buyer had to be found. Scottish Television snapped up the business and began slashing budgets. Two editors left in frustration. The Brussels office was closed in a process of retrenchment and redundancy deals became frequent, but all the while profits rose. SMG’s hopeless management finally made such a mess of the whole company that it had to sell off The Herald to survive. And that led to the disaster of Newsquest, a fall in editorial quality, collapsing circulation, much misery among the staff and – as ever – rising profits.

Today’s Herald is a shadow of its former self, so afraid of making waves that it even killed a column by Scotland’s best commentator, Ian Bell, in its election issue, reportedly because his views were “too controversial”. That is what The Herald has come to.

The future is clear: the Herald’s owners will sooner or later have no more blood to suck and Newsquest will presumably use its millions of profit to “invest” elsewhere and sell the paper for whatever it can get.

Journalists – those who remain – want this process averted. The facts are explained in the petition currently doing the rounds from Herald journalists. All people who care about The Herald should sign it. Don’t let the oldest English-language national morning paper in the world, so important to Scottish political life, be abused in this manner. The petition is on http://www.ipetitions.com/petition/heraldandtimes/