Scotland's newspaper industry will be dead in five years' time, predict two of the country's former senior editors. Both Stewart Kirkpatrick, ex-editor of The Scotsman's website and Iain S Bruce, former technology editor at The Herald, believe that, without urgent action, their former papers will disappear by 2013.
They are quoted on a Desktop Hack blog posting headlined The end is nigh. Fitzpatrick, who left his paper last year after seven years, says:
"The Herald and the Scotsman are both going the same way in trimming down their news teams as they try to be more cost effective. But this is just a knee-jerk reaction and does nothing to address the real problems. If they don't change their business models and find ways to make money out of their online offerings fast, they will both be gone in five years."
Bruce, who was 10 years with The Herald, says:
"Heavy job losses only serve to create weaker newspapers, as they eradicate their vital resource. Fewer people working at a newspaper makes for a weaker publication and this means even lower circulation. If they continue to scale back in this way, the quality Scottish press will soon cease to exist."
Needless to say, I agree. Unless their owners Johnston Press (Scotsman) and Newsquest/Gannett (Herald) change strategy, they will see off two titles for ever because they are both running poor websites quite apart from ruining their newsprint platforms.
