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The ''Sunday Herald'' was a Scottish
Sunday newspaper
A newspaper is a periodical publication containing written information about current events and is often typed in black ink with a white or gray background.
Newspapers can cover a wide variety of fields such as politics, business, sports an ...
, published between 7 February 1999 and 2 September 2018. Originally a
broadsheet, it was published in
compact
Compact as used in politics may refer broadly to a pact or treaty; in more specific cases it may refer to:
* Interstate compact
* Blood compact, an ancient ritual of the Philippines
* Compact government, a type of colonial rule utilized in British ...
format from 20 November 2005. The paper was known for having combined a
centre-left
Centre-left politics lean to the left on the left–right political spectrum but are closer to the centre than other left-wing politics. Those on the centre-left believe in working within the established systems to improve social justice. The ...
stance with support for
Scottish devolution
Devolution is the process in which the central British parliament grants administrative powers (excluding principally reserved matters) to the devolved Scottish Parliament. Prior to the advent of devolution, some had argued for a Scottish ...
, and later
Scottish independence. The last edition of the newspaper was published on 2 September 2018 and it was replaced with Sunday editions of
''The Herald'' and
''The National''''.
Circulation
In July 2012, the newspapers' publishers classified the ''Sunday Herald'' as a regional instead of a national title.
Between July and December 2013, the ''Sunday Herald'' sold an average of 23,907 copies, down 7.5% on the 12 months previous. After declaring support for
Scottish independence, The ''Sunday Herald'' received a huge increase in sales, with circulation in September 2014 up 111% year on year.
By 2017 circulation had fallen to 18,387 and in August 2018 staff were told they would now be expected to work on the Glasgow Herald too, with the potential for the two titles to be combined at some point in the future.
History
Background
In early 1998 the Scottish Media Group (SMG), then led by chairman
Gus Macdonald
Gus is a masculine name, often a diminutive for Angus, August, Augustine, or Augustus, and other names (e.g. Aengus, Argus, Fergus, Ghassan, Gustav, Gustave, Gustafson, Gustavo, Gussie).
It can also be used as the adaptation into English ...
, decided to create a
Sunday sister for its existing national morning title ''
The Herald'', because the
Glasgow
Glasgow ( ; sco, Glesca or ; gd, Glaschu ) is the most populous city in Scotland and the fourth-most populous city in the United Kingdom, as well as being the 27th largest city by population in Europe. In 2020, it had an estimated popul ...
-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 AM (born 20 April 1952) is a British-Australian journalist and Founding Director and Editor-in-Chief of 360info. He is the Founder of ''The Conversation''. He was previously editor-in-chief of Melbourne's''The Age'', editor o ...
, then the publisher and managing director of ''
The Big Issue
''The Big Issue'' is a street newspaper founded by John Bird and Gordon Roddick in September 1991 and published in four continents. ''The Big Issue'' is one of the UK's leading social businesses and exists to offer homeless people, or individ ...
'' and a former editor of ''Scotland on Sunday'', ''
The Scotsman
''The Scotsman'' is a Scottish compact newspaper and daily news website headquartered in Edinburgh. First established as a radical political paper in 1817, it began daily publication in 1855 and remained a broadsheet until August 2004. Its pare ...
'' and ''
The Observer
''The Observer'' is a British newspaper published on Sundays. It is a sister paper to ''The Guardian'' and '' The Guardian Weekly'', whose parent company Guardian Media Group Limited acquired it in 1993. First published in 1791, it is the ...
'' to examine the business case for launching a new Sunday title. In October 1998 SMG (now known as
STV Group plc
STV Group plc (formerly known as Scottish Television plc, Scottish Media Group plc and SMG plc) is a media company based in Glasgow, Scotland. Beginning as a television broadcaster in 1957, the company expanded into newspapers, advertising and r ...
), which also owns the broadcaster
STV, committed to putting £10 million behind the new paper's launch.
Jaspan's launch team
Jaspan assembled a launch team including former
Hue & Cry singer
Pat Kane
Patrick Mark "Pat" Kane (born 10 March 1964) is a Scottish musician, journalist, political activist and one half of the pop duo Hue and Cry with his younger brother Greg.Larkin, Colin (1997) ''The Virgin Encyclopedia of Eighties Music'', Virgi ...
, TV producer and presenter
Muriel Gray and
BBC #REDIRECT BBC #REDIRECT BBC
Here i going to introduce about the best teacher of my life b BALAJI sir. He is the precious gift that I got befor 2yrs . How has helped and thought all the concept and made my success in the 10th board exam. ...
...
political commentator
Iain Macwhirter and designer Simon Cunningham. Other former BBC television and radio journalists who joined the title included
Lesley Riddoch
Lesley Anne Riddoch (born February 1960) is a Scottish radio broadcaster, activist and journalist who lives in Fife. During the 1990s, she was a contributing editor of the ''Sunday Herald'' and an assistant editor of ''The Scotsman''. Since 2004, ...
, Torcuil Crichton and Pennie Taylor. A number of former ''
Scotsman'' and ''
Scotland on Sunday
''Scotland on Sunday'' is a Scottish Sunday newspaper, published in Edinburgh by JPIMedia and consequently assuming the role of Sunday sister to its daily stablemate '' The Scotsman''. It was originally printed in broadsheet format but in 20 ...
'' staff also joined the new paper, as did several journalists from ''The Big Issue'' Scottish edition including
Neil Mackay, David Milne and Iain S Bruce.
The ''Sunday Herald'' was launched as a seven-section newspaper on 7 February 1999. It was advertised with the slogan "No ordinary Sunday". The use of the word "fuck" in the first edition of the magazine alienated older and more
conservative
Conservatism is a cultural, social, and political philosophy that seeks to promote and to preserve traditional institutions, practices, and values. The central tenets of conservatism may vary in relation to the culture and civilization in ...
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
Budd Schulberg (born Seymour Wilson Schulberg, March 27, 1914 – August 5, 2009) was an American screenwriter, television producer, novelist and sports writer. He was known for his novels '' What Makes Sammy Run?'' and ''The Harder They Fall;'' ...
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
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, conflict = Iraq War {{Nobold, {{lang, ar, حرب العراق (Arabic) {{Nobold, {{lang, ku, شەڕی عێراق ( Kurdish)
, partof = the Iraq conflict and the War on terror
, image ...
line.
Sale to Newsquest
After having over-paid for acquisitions during the dot-com era,
Scottish Media Group 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
An auction is usually a process of buying and selling goods or services by offering them up for bids, taking bids, and then selling the item to the highest bidder or buying the item from the lowest bidder. Some exceptions to this definition ex ...
, accompanied by a heated public debate, ensued.
When it looked like the
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
Andrew Ferguson Neil (born 21 May 1949) is a Scottish former journalist and broadcaster who is chairman of ''The Spectator'' and presenter of '' The Andrew Neil Show'' on Channel 4. He was editor of ''The Sunday Times'' from 1983 to 1994. He f ...
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
A tax exile is a person who leaves a country to avoid the payment of income tax or other taxes. The term refers to an individual who already owes money to the tax authorities or wishes to avoid being liable in the future for taxation at what they ...
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)
The Labour Party is a political party in the United Kingdom that has been described as an alliance of social democrats, democratic socialists and trade unionists. The Labour Party sits on the centre-left of the political spectrum. In all gen ...
politicians at their September 2002 conference in
Blackpool.
The campaign proved successful, with even the
Financial Times
The ''Financial Times'' (''FT'') is a British daily newspaper printed in broadsheet and published digitally that focuses on business and economic current affairs. Based in London, England, the paper is owned by a Japanese holding company, Ni ...
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) for £216 million. 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
''The Age'' is a daily newspaper in Melbourne, Australia, that has been published since 1854. Owned and published by Nine Entertainment, ''The Age'' primarily serves Victoria, but copies also sell in Tasmania, the Australian Capital Territory ...
'' in Melbourne, Australia.
Richard Walker Richard Walker, Rick, Ricky, or Dick Walker may refer to:
Arts and entertainment
* Richard Walker (baritone) (1897–1989), English singer and actor
Law and politics
* Richard Walker (MP) (1784–1855), British Member of Parliament for Bury, 1832 ...
was appointed as his successor. Walker, a former production journalist on both the ''Daily Record'' and ''Scotland on Sunday'' 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 An Audit Bureau of Circulations is a private organization that provides industry-agreed standards for media brand measurement of print publications and other media outlets in a given country. The International Federation of Audit Bureaux of Circula ...
), and readership at 195,000 (source: National Readership Survey). The week before the ''Sunday Herald'' was launched in February 1999, the Barclays' ''Scotland on Sunday'' sold more than 130,000 copies. This has since plummeted to c.46,000, about 50% higher than the circulation (June 2012 ABCs) of the Sunday Herald (26,074 weekly).
Walker was behind the launch of the blog site Sundayheraldtalk.com in September 2006..
Taxigate
In April 2006 the ''Sunday Herald'' Scottish political editor,
Paul Hutcheon, won both Political Journalist of the Year and Journalist of the Year in the
Scottish Press Awards
The Scottish Press Awards is an annual ceremony which recognises talent in Scottish journalism. The ceremony was established by the Scottish Newspaper Society (SNS), which "represents, protects, and promotes" Scotland's newspaper industry, in 1979 ...
for articles revealing that
David McLetchie
David William McLetchie CBE (6 August 1952 – 12 August 2013) was a Scottish politician who served as Leader of the Scottish Conservative Party from 1999 to 2005. He was Member of the Scottish Parliament (MSP) for the Edinburgh Pentlands co ...
, leader of the
Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
The Scottish Conservative & Unionist Party ( gd, Pàrtaidh Tòraidheach na h-Alba, sco, Scots Tory an Unionist Pairty), often known simply as the Scottish Conservatives and colloquially as the Scottish Tories, is a centre-right political par ...
, 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 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.
On 14 April 2011, Mr Justice Eady granted firs ...
'' 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 the injunction was not valid in Scotland which is a separate jurisdiction and only applicable to England,
however one 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. The paper was awarded the European Newspaper of the Year in the category of weekend paper by the European Newspaper Congress in 2011.
Independence referendum
The ''Sunday Herald'' was the only Scottish newspaper to back a vote for independence in the
2014 Scottish independence referendum.
Alasdair Gray
Alasdair James Gray (28 December 1934 – 29 December 2019) was a Scottish writer and artist. His first novel, ''Lanark: A Life in Four Books, Lanark'' (1981), is seen as a landmark of Scottish fiction. He published novels, short stories, plays ...
designed a special front page for the ''Sunday Herald'' in May 2014 when it came out in favour of a "Yes" vote.
The cover consisted of a large thistle framed by
Scottish saltires.
Closure
The newspaper ceased publication in late 2018, after falling sales.
Editors
:1999:
Andrew Jaspan
Andrew Jaspan AM (born 20 April 1952) is a British-Australian journalist and Founding Director and Editor-in-Chief of 360info. He is the Founder of ''The Conversation''. He was previously editor-in-chief of Melbourne's''The Age'', editor o ...
:2004:
Richard Walker Richard Walker, Rick, Ricky, or Dick Walker may refer to:
Arts and entertainment
* Richard Walker (baritone) (1897–1989), English singer and actor
Law and politics
* Richard Walker (MP) (1784–1855), British Member of Parliament for Bury, 1832 ...
:2015:
Neil Mackay
:2018:
See also
*
List of newspapers in Scotland
This is a list of newspapers in Scotland.
Daily newspapers
:
Traditionally newspapers could be divided into 'quality', serious-minded newspapers (usually referred to as 'broadsheets' due to their large size) and 'tabloids', or less serious news ...
*''
Scottish Daily News''
References
*
*
External links
''Sunday Herald'' website
{{GCI
Publications established in 1999
1999 establishments in Scotland
2018 disestablishments in Scotland
The Herald (Glasgow)
Newspapers published in Scotland
Weekly newspapers published in the United Kingdom
Scottish independence
Defunct Sunday newspapers published in the United Kingdom