The Scottish government is staging a media summit tomorrow to discuss the crisis facing the country’s newspaper industry.

Political controversy has raged north of the border over Newsquest Glasgow’s plan to reduce headcount at its Herald, Evening Times and Sunday Herald titles by 40.

Concerns about the proposal were expressed in the Scottish Parliament and Jim Mather, minister for enterprise, energy and tourism responded by holding the summit, to be held at Glasgow Caledonian University.

Among those taking part will be Scotland’s leading newspaper editors, trade unionists, academics and representatives of industry bodies.

Plans for the summit were first aired at a parliamentary debate last month when Mr Mather responded to MSPs’ concerns by pledging to bring together the key people who have a stake in the future of mass media communication in Scotland to “unleash the potential for collaboration.”

Julian Calvert, lecturer in journalism at Glasgow Caledonian University, said: “This is a critical moment for the newspaper industry in Scotland, and Glasgow Caledonian is hosting the summit as part of our commitment to quality journalism and a thriving news sector.

“The industry has clearly reached a tipping point but there is an opportunity for the Caledonian summit to hammer out the creative solutions that will help preserve and develop not just the present and future of the news industry in Scotland, but the impact this industry has on the wider social and political good.”

Comments

Liam (03/02/2009 22:05:36)
Scotland needs ONE quality newspaper.
Let both The Herald and The Scotsman disappear – they are poor excuses for national newspapers.
Let a new title, The Scottish News rise from the ashes in print and online.

iain morse (04/02/2009 11:09:56)
Both the Scotsman and Herald have paper circulation of under 45k and falling-why should they be helped when other people are losing jobs?There is no reason for these titles to survive in the internet/satellite news age.I say this having written for both papers as a freelance-its sad but true.Scottish Labour blocked an attempt to amalgamate the titles some years ago-but this is the only option in the long term and might not even save these titles.