WELCOME to Media Movers, reporting the latest moves within the Scottish media, including promotions and retirements.
AND this issue of Media Movers is almost entirely given over to recent developments at the four Express Newspapers titles in Scotland: the Scottish Daily Express, the Daily Star Scotland and their respective Sunday editions.
As reported in The Guardian (here), the newspapers group, UK-wide, is said to be seeking 25 compulsory redundancies, after a deadline for voluntary redundancies expired last week.
In Scotland, those voluntary redundancies saw three stalwarts bid farewell on December 31, including Scottish Daily Express political editor, Kerry Gill.
Gill’s powerful op eds – including arguing for a No vote in the referendum on Scots independence – were joined by the institution in the paper that is the Hickey column.
The Hickey column now in the Scottish Daily Express is an UK-wide feature, but under Gill, it was exclusively Scottish, his final flourish being a wholly fictional and typically idioysyncratic lifetime ban by the courts from writing a column.
He has been in the newspapers business for 45 years, starting out on local newspapers in his native Tyneside before joining The Journal (Newcastle), The Scotsman, The Times, where he was the paper’s Scottish correspondent, and the Daily Record.
Said Scottish Daily Express editor, David Hamilton: “Kerry was, for me, the beating heart of the Scottish Daily Express and is a big loss to the paper. As well as crafting many peerless, pertinent and pithy op-eds, his hugely popular Hickey was a constant dig in the ribs to politicians, bureaucrats and anyone else who took themselves too seriously.
“We’ll miss him hugely, as we will miss our other much-valued colleagues who have left the papers in the past few weeks. We thank them, and wish them the best of luck.”
Kerry’s leaving page featured a number of in-jokes, including a reference to the fact that he once shared a student flat with musician, Bryan Ferry.
Joining Gill on departing on Hogmanay were Alasdair Ferguson (Scottish Daily Express night editor) and Rod Mills (Scottish Daily Express chief reporter). Earlier in the month had seen Tom Fullerton (Scottish Daily Express news editor) leave.
The VR process began at the papers in October, with the departure of, among others, Alastair Murray (Scottish Sunday Express night editor).
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AS noted on allmediascotland.com on Monday, a former BBC Scotland senior manager has been appointed to the newly-created post of senior vice-president at the Scots division of PR agency, Weber Shandwick.
Andrew Jones joins from Robert Gordon University where – says Weber Shandwick – “he headed up the multimedia journalism programme for undergraduate and postgraduate degrees”.
Meanwhile, Weber Shandwick has made three further appointments, at its Aberdeen office: Lindsay Jepp, Mhairi Greer and Andrew Gill.
Read more, here.
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