THE website of The Herald and Sunday Herald newspapers has undergone an attractive revamp.
Says the site, here: “HeraldScotland has launched its new, revamped site.
“The site, which went live [yesterday], features an updated layout that includes picture galleries, social media content and videos.”
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The National newspaper begins: “A former BBC presenter – now an SNP MP – has put the subject of a Scottish 6 o’clock TV news bulletin back into the limelight.
“John Nicolson, the member for East Dunbartonshire, was speaking at Westminster yesterday when he said that Scotland was perhaps the ‘only country in the world’ where no foreign news was run on the national teatime news programme.”
Read more, here.
Meanwhile, the lead story on page three of today’s Herald newspaper begins: “John Nicolson was best known on TV as a presenter of BBC Breakfast and won plaudits for anchoring the corporation’s breaking coverage of the 9/11 terrorist attacks.
“Now the Nationalist MP has spoken out about how came up against old-fashioned attitudes in the BBC’s corridors of power 15 years ago after he went public in a newspaper interview about his homosexuality.”
Read more, here.
This line is reported elsewhere, including page ten of The Scotsman.
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STAYING with The National, columnist, Lesley Riddoch, is dismayed by BBC Scotland’s coverage of the maiden speech, at Westminster, by SNP MP, Mhairi Black.
As others were lauding Black’s performance, Riddoch writes (here): “And what did [BBC Scotland’s} Reporting Scotland make of the phenomenon that was the blockbusting Commons debut of Mhairi Black MP? They talked over a 20-second clip of her speech, but allowed viewers to hear the deputy speaker tell SNP MPs not to clap at the end of it. Twice.”
Elsewhere, the BBC’s newsbeat, reports (here), of the speech: “It’s not often you have an MP trending. But then Mhairi Black is no ordinary politician.
“The 20 year-old Scottish National Party politician is the country’s youngest MP and she made her first speech in the House of Commons on Tuesday.
“She’s been getting rave reviews from outside parliament, as well as inside.”
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AND The Scotsman’s Platform op ed slot is taken today by journalism lecturer, Ewan Crawford, who begins: “In a book on the early BBC, historian Thomas Hajkowski recalls a fierce row between the Scottish programme director and a London Head Office executive over the transmission of the opera Acis and Galatea.
“Head Office insisted Scots needed more Handel in their lives; the programme director thought otherwise.”
His article – here – is headed, ‘The people deserve a more Scottish BBC Scotland’.
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ENTRIES are being sought for The Herald’s seventh Scottish Digital Business Awards, which the paper describes as “the annual showcase for one of Scotland’s most dynamic and rapidly growing sectors”.
Read more, here.
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THE website, Brand Republic, is among several media outlets today reporting the latest quarterly survey (out today) measuring marketing spending plans, produced by the Institute of Practitioners in Advertising (IPA).
And it begins, here: “Marketing budgets have increased for the 11th consecutive quarter but confidence is ‘on the wane’, according to the latest IPA Bellwether Report.
“A net balance of 12.2 per cent of companies registered an increase in budgets in the second quarter of 2015, up from 11.8 per cent in the first quarter and 6.1 per cent in the fourth quarter of 2014.
“But the report also revealed growing pessimism both at company and industry level.
“Levels of confidence in companies’ own financial prospects dropped to a nine-quarter low of 25.3 per cent, compared with 37.8 per cent in the last quarter.
“Marketers’ confidence in their wider industry’s financial prospects, meanwhile, dropped to a two-year low of 13.1 per cent, down from 26 per cent in the previous survey.”
Read more about the report, here, including reaction from the IPA’s chair for Scotland, Brian Coane.
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REPORTS the website, radiotoday.co.uk: “[Fife radio station] Kingdom FM is giving away Turkey with all the trimmings this summer – and has enlisted Santa for some help.
“The station will be giving away a five-star, all inclusive, summer holiday for two to Turkey, flying Business Class with Turkish Airlines… and tells us they will be throwing in all the trimmings too.”
Read more, here.
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