Flying Scotsman

When Canadian Publisher Roy Thomson bought Scotland's whiskery morning Scotsman (circ. 56,091), he stropped his razor and announced that he planned changes that "would be obvious to any American newspaper operator." Moving into the Scotsman's gingerbread headquarters on Edinburgh's North Bridge, Thomson stepped up news of the Commonwealth and hired longtime Glasgow Daily Record Editor Alastair M. Dunnett to brighten and broaden the influential Scotsman's local coverage.

The new regime's first major change was to perform the biggest physical transformation in the paper's 140-year history. Thomson banished the solid columns of classified ads that had filled the front page since the Scotsman became a daily in 1855, and turned over Page One to news. "There are 1,700 daily newspapers in the U.S.," Thomson said, "and not one of them fills the front page with want ads. Are they all out of step but us?"

The Scotsman's streamlining is only the first step in an ambitious plan to make it an "important and influential paper around the world," said Publisher Thomson, 63, a plump, pink-cheeked, bustling Scottish-descended Toronto native who owns 20 dailies in Canada (almost one-fourth of Canada's English-language dailies) as well as Florida's St. Petersburg Independent (circ. 25,820). This summer he plans to assign staff correspondents to major international news centers, and will start publishing a special airmail edition that will be flown to world capitals and reach European newsstands only a few hours after publication. Thomson hopes the Scotsman will thus become the conservative, north-of-the-border counterpart of the Manchester Guardian, Britain's most prestigious provincial daily, while also reaching added circulation by appealing to the staunch home-country pride of Scots the world over. At home Thomson intends to invade the more thickly populated Scottish west coast and challenge the Scotsman's ancient adversary, the Glasgow Herald (circ. 76,379), which still runs ads on Page One.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.