A REFERENDUM wrap-around – headed ‘Choose well Scotland’ – is among the offerings today for readers of the main daily newspapers available in Scotland.
The wrap-around, accompanying the Daily Record, opens to reveal a front page headed, All to pray for, teeing up the paper’s coverage of today’s indyref with several appeals, both Yes and No.
Other headings include:
* D-day for the Union – The Times
* Yes or No. Today Scotland starts with a blank page – The Scottish Sun
* Mark your mark – The Courier
* Be Britain still to Britain true, Amang ourselves united; For never but by British hands, Maun British wrongs be righted! (Robert Burns) – The Daily Telegraph
* One day to decide our future – i
* Don’t leave us this way – Daily Mirror
* Day of destiny – The Guardian
* Gordon Brown’s pleas to voters on day of destiny: We will build the future together – Daily Star of Scotland
* Yes or No, you decide – The Press and Journal
* The day of destiny – The Scotsman
* Beauty and terror leave Scots on the rack… and the brink of history – Financial Times
* Don’t let the sun set on the Union – Scottish Daily Express
* It has been the bedrock of our greatest triumphs and united us during our darkest hours. Today, let us secure Scotland’s future in the glorious and remarkable family of nations that is Great Britain – Scottish Daily Mail
* The 307-year itch – The Independent
* Scotland’s day of reckoning – The Herald
Read the pressgazette’s take on today’s newspapers… here. And also, Roy Greenslade’s, in The Guardian, here.
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WRITES well-known Scots journalist, Shaun Milne, on his personal blog: “Official stats from @Twitter released tonight show in the past year until today, an astonishing 5.4 million tweets using the #IndyRef hashtag have been sent in the past year.
“As the campaigns picked up the pace, a staggering 2.4 million of those were sent in the last month alone.
“Since June 1, the official account of First Minister, @AlexSalmond, saw its follower count grow by 39 per cent to 90,798 followers.
“@YesScotland recorded a 100 per cent rise to 91,222 followers.
“By contrast @TogetherDarling musters 20,413 followers which is up 66 per cent for the former Chancellor with @UK_Together on 40,008 – up 68 per cent.”
Read more, here.
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BEGINS The Herald today: “BBC Political correspondent, Nick Robinson, has emailed staff at BBC Scotland’s Pacific Quay HQ to apologise for ‘becoming the story’ after hundreds of demonstrators protested outside the building against alleged bias on the part of the broadcaster.”
Read more here.
And also in The Herald, columnist, Iain Macwhirter, begins: “Be afraid; be very afraid.
“It has been the media’s message throughout this campaign. The banks will leave, food prices will rocket, Scotland will be thrown out of Nato, the European Union, the Eurovision Song Contest. Scots have been battered around the head with warnings of chaos and division, savage racism, fighting in the streets, the burning of books, children turned away from hospitals, a halt to cancer research. There shall be a Great Depression.”
Read more, here.
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BEGINS The Guardian: “As security is stepped up by the BBC and The Scotsman in the runup to Thursday’s Scottish independence referendum, it has emerged that a journalist has reported a serious threat that was made to his family to the police.
“Amid reports of abuse and intimidation towards reporters in the final days of the campaign, some media organisations have asked staff to be vigilant and briefed them about additional security.”
Read more, here.
And begins Jane Martinson, also in The Guardian: “For TV reporter Tom Bradby it’s worse than Northern Ireland at the height of the Troubles (read the pressgazette’s report of the story, here), for Guardian columnist George Monbiot the Scottish referendum has shown the entire British media as ‘just one chamber of the corrupt heart of Britain’. We may be used to politics becoming impassioned just ahead of an important vote in this country; what seems unusual this time is the extent to which journalists have been tarred with the same brush as the political elites in Westminster and the City.”
Read more, here.
And again begins The Guardian: “Sky News presenter Kay Burley has apologised for calling a campaigner ‘a bit of a knob’ on live TV after he tried to hit her cameraman with a stick.”
Read more, here.
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WRITES Steve Dyson on the website, holdthefrontpage (here): “Twitter is often seen as key to engaging with readers, but use of the social media platform by regional daily editors varies sharply, with the most active attracting more than 29,000 followers while the least active has just 21.
“And editors’ personal popularities on the leading social media channel appear to bear little relation to their newspapers’ Twitter performance or print sales, according to data collected this month.
“The editors’ Twitter league rankings show Magnus Llewellin, of The Herald, Glasgow, coming top with an impressive 29,200 followers – nearly 20,000 more than his nearest competitor.”
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A SCOTS short film competition has issued a call for entries.
Bridging the Gap – now in its 12th year – has set a deadline of the ten of next month for entries that will culminate in four successful applications each receiving £8,000 in cash plus in-kind support.
For more information, click here.
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THE Scotland editor of The Daily Telegraph has been quoted by The Drum media and marketing magazine as saying he would welcome “with open arms” an alleged £20,000 payout from the paper, should Scotland vote No in today’s indyref, while denying any knowledge of the alleged offer.
Claims the satirical magazine, Private Eye (renamed for this current issue, Private ‘Och’ Eye) Alan Cochrane was in line for the payment.
Read more, here.
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A CHIEF reporter is being sought at the Clydebank Post – as advertised here on allmediascotland.com.
The vacancy also gets a mention on www.twitter.com/allmediajobs, the allmediascotland dedicated media jobs twitter feed – featuring print, digital, marketing, PR and broadcasting vacancies.
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WRITES Rob Bruce, described as a ‘PR and communications specialist’, on the website of The Drum media and marketing magazine: “This whole [indyref] debate has been about empowerment and the ability to influence. It’s about feeling and believing you matter and can make a difference.
“And that has led to the most powerful pieces of campaign activity being created by the voters and not the communication specialists.
“They understand their pals and peers better than you ever will, and without even thinking about it will they create and converse in the most compelling way.”
Read more, here.
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ALSO in The Drum, this time by journalist, Stephan Lepitak: “Cello Group has announced a 9.4 per cent increase in revenue, with gross profit having also risen by 14.8 per cent for the first half of the year.
“The marketing services group, which owns The Leith Agency, Tangible Group and Blonde Digital, reported revenue of £78.3m and gross profit of £39.5m for the first six months of 2014.”
Read more, here.
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