The people of Scotland are turning their backs in increasing numbers on their home-grown serious newspapers. The latest set of ABC figures reveal that The Scotsman, based in Edinburgh, has lost more than 9% of its sale in a year while the Glasgow-based Herald has lost more than 6%. Their Sunday stablemates did poorly too. Scotland on Sunday and Sunday Herald dropped by 8.6% and 3% respectively between October this year and October 2005.
The Scotsman sold fewer than 60,000 copies in October and The Herald came close to falling below 70,000. It is noticeable too that London-based competitors - such as The Times, the Daily Telegraph and The Guardian - also registered small losses of Scottish sales. Quality papers are suffering in Scotland. Indeed, the only daily papers to increase year-on-year sales north of the border were the Daily Mail, adding just 2,000 extra copies, and The Sun which went up by a mighty 65,000 due largely to its discounted pricing and the continuing collapse of the Daily Record circulation, which has dropped by a further 7.5% over the past 12 months.
The falls in the quality titles should also be seen in the context of the decreases registered by the other so-called city-state newspapers in Scotland. The most recent regional ABC figures record that the Press & Journal in Aberdeen and the Dundee Courier both sold 3.2% fewer copies during weekdays in the January-June period this year compared to last. The Paisley Daily Express dropped by more than 7%. And the story of the Scots evening papers was similar, with the Glasgow Evening Times and the Edinburgh Evening News also returning substantial sales losses.
Looked at together, these figures tend to bear out Andrew Neil's withering statements about Scots media at the Society of Editors conference at the weekend in which he savaged Scottish newspapers by claiming that they were "on the road to the knacker's yard". And you can hear part of his rant on the media guardian podcast.
