We have never previously had a look at the navel-gazing world of the Stornoway Gazette but, now that we have had ample time to do a bit of navel-gazing ourselves over the Christmas period, here goes.
A company called Stornoway Gazette Ltd was formed as long ago as 1954. However, the Gazette had been on the go long before that and is now over 100 years old. The Grant family had been associated with the Gazette from the very beginning until then-proprietor and former editor James Shaw Grant sold out to Johnston Press plc in the 1990s. James Shaw Grant retired to live on the mainland. James's father, William Grant, was the original proprietor and editor of the paper.
The heavily-indebted Johnston Press plc crashed into the financial buffers in 2018 and ownership then rose from the ashes and transferred to JPI Media Publications Ltd. However, JPI didn't last long and the newspapers within JPI transferred to National World plc in 2019. National World's main man is controversial Irishman David John Montgomery, always referred to by Private Eye as 'Rommel' in years gone by. National World was incorporated as recently as 2019 so that it doesn't have much of a track trecord at the time of writing.
Melinda Gillen was editor of the Gazette for a period of 16 years until August 2020. A temporary editor was installed until April 2021 when the current duo of The Rt Hon Brian Wilson CBE and Murray MacLeod took over, Wilson as Editor-at-Large and MacLeod as nominal editor. The result was an immediate improvement in the quality of the paper even if it does mean that The Reverend Professor continues his mad ramblings just as he used to do at the West Highland Free Press of old. Does anyone ever read Donald's full article, we wonder, or, like us, do they just give up, utterly perplexed, by the third paragraph?
The difficulty, of course, will be to maintain that improvement and, over the last few months, we get the feeling of deja-vu, as if the nominal editor is getting tired already. Wilson himself is as indefatigable as ever but even he cannot continue to write the paper forever and forever. It remains to be seen how Wilson will get on with Montgomery.
The weakness in the paper currently is that it is not controversial enough in that the editors appear terrified of angering the SNP supporters in the Western Isles of whom there are far too many. The SNP's record in government in general - and for the islands in particular - gives the Gazette a sitting duck target every day of the week yet they won't take it. That will be the paper's downfall. We simply do not know where it stands. We'd far rather a right-wing Tory stance than no stance at all.
Our other disagreement with the paper is its policy of not reporting criminal court cases. An important part of a local newspaper's function is to let the people know who is committing crimes round about them and we really haven't a clue as to who is doing what. We are not remotely interested in someone driving a few degrees over the limit or a drunk stealing a bottle of wine from the Co-op but we do want to know who is engaging in criminal activities in our midst. We do not like criminals who harm others. This is censorship as if we, the public, have no right to know what is going on. We should not be treated like fools. Censorship like this will only add to the Gazette's eventual demise.
However, by far the greatest benefit from Melinda days is that the Gazette is no longer the mouthpiece of the demented local MP Angus Brendan MacNeil and his equally demented acolytes....... for example three photographs of Angus Brendan by Melinda on just one page in years gone by. That defenestration, alone, makes everything worthwhile.
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