EDITIONS held back, contingencies penned for both victory and defeat, distribution at the ready. Where printing allowed, it was ‘all hands on deck’, as Scotland’s daily newspapers did their best to report the early-hours-in-the-morning victory of Andy Murray in the US Open tennis tournament.
In doing so, Murray became the first Brit in 76 years to win one of the sport’s Grand Slam events.
And while the Scottish Daily Mail was notable for its relatively early East coast edition managing to splash the win, most of the rest were able to make good with later editions.
The Scottish Sun, for instance, managed to muster 109,000 copies of the paper – to various parts of the country – with the story, having managed to hold off printing for two hours.
It was not much different elsewhere. Dunblane – Murray’s home town – was definitely on the delivery radar of the Daily Record, says editor-in-chief, Allan Rennie – as it pulled together 130,000 copies with news of the triumph. The Scottish Sun also made sure Dunblane got the latest on its famous son.
Online, it was a similar tale of journalists working through the night.
Scottish Daily Mail editor, Chris Williams, said: “It was a slick, military-style operation,” explaining how printing was held up by 90 minutes, to allow for 65,000 copies to carry reports of the success, and again with Dunblane firmly among the distribution destinations.
Says deputy editor of The Scotsman, Peter MacMahon: “Thanks to a brilliant effort by [assistant editor] Donald Walker, [night editor] Mark Eadie, [sports editor] Colin Leslie and many, many others, we did a very late slip edition of more than 13,000 copies.”
Writing credits go to, among others, Colin Duncan (Daily Record), Sarah Bruce and Mike Dickson (Scottish Daily Mail), Douglas Walker (The Scottish Sun) and Stephen Wilkie and Brian Swanson (Daily Star of Scotland and Scottish Daily Express).
