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Sunday newspaper celebrates its coming of age

A Sunday newspaper has celebrated its 18th anniversary with a special supplement.

The Sunday Herald, in Glasgow, reached the milestone last week and marked the occasion in its latest edition.

The edition was themed around the number 18 – with features including a showcase of 18 of its front pages and charting 18 years that changed Scotland.

There was also a look back on what life was like in February 1999 when the Herald launched and a look at the phenomenon of what being 18 means.

Sunday Herald 18

In a piece marking the anniversary, editor Neil Mackay said: “Eighteen years ago, as the crime and investigations editor of the Sunday Herald, I was part of the launch team of this paper.

“Today, as editor, I have the pleasure of leading one of the hardest-working, most talented and dedicated teams of journalists in the business. I joined the Sunday Herald after leaving Scotland on Sunday – a paper which was tired, staid, a stick-in-the-mud, with a Thatcherite line out of synch with modern Scotland.

“I was intrigued by what I was told by the Sunday Herald’s launch editor Andrew Jaspan: that this new paper would be exciting, young, vibrant – in touch with the aspirations and concerns of this great country of ours.

“And exciting and young it was: we were the first paper in Scotland to embrace the internet. When we launched we were the only paper in the UK to run email addresses under reporters’ bylines.

“It seems banal now, but it was revolutionary then – we had reporters who actually wanted to engage with their readers.

“The launch team may have been holed up on the top floor of the Herald and Times’ Black Lubyanka building on Albion Street, above the grotty old Press Bar, but we were the first newspaper office filled with shiny green and blue iMacs (remember those?) and it made the team feel that we were really creating something new – which we were.”