Here is the news... it's bad

SO,WHAT'S the biggest cultural challenge facing Scotland today?

Lack of money to buy pictures for the National Galleries?

Lack of support for our National Theatre?

Naw, these things are surely a bit petty.

Education then? The crisis in our schools.Possibly.

Personally I would cite our lack of a decent pan Scotland National newspaper as being the biggest cultural need of our times.

But I can feel you getting bored.

"What about The Scotsman, or The Herald?"

You cry.

Listen pal. Have you read either this morning?

Naw. And neither have I.

I did make an attempt at getting through the Scotsman's facile lead story today - some Red-top-style bogus survey of Scottish businessmen supporting Salmond that had as much substance as candy floss. Sadly I found myself losing the will to live, or indeed read on, about half way through the second paragraph.

As for the Herald, well my problem is it's so unutterably dull. I mean when did you last have a belly laugh whilst reading the Herald, other than through Ron Ferguson?

Not that things are dull at the Herald office this morning, indeed as I write these words a meeting is going on to discuss proposals for forty more job losses on a paper that is already making millions for its American owners, who want it to make even more, just because they think it might.

The plan is to make forty staff redundant, and that's on top of the ones that were made redundant after the last night of the long knives, which was about a year ago.

What this will mean is even more cut and paste journalism with even more stuff being nicked off websites, even more talented hacks walking around like zombies through exhaustion and The Herald becoming even duller because nobody can write well under that kind of pressure.

I don't want to be hysterical about this.

After all newspapers are a business and the owners surely have the right to manage that business in a manner to maximise their profits.

And yet. And yet.

I mean here we are as a nation swithering as to whether to support Big Eck, or Lala as I understand he is known, in his transparent objective of seducing the nation to dull eyed nationalism and there are no papers making even the most paltry attempt at in depth evaluations of what's going on

An overstatement? Right. Name me the Bills that passed through Hollyrood this week? A bit tough eh.

Here's an easier one. Was Hollyrood sitting this week?

If you do know the answers, grand. But few do. Try the question on some of your friends. The lack of engagement in the political process is becoming endemic. Last week I met a twenty seven year old on her second degree who had never heard of Menzies Campbell.

Now my suggestion is that in a culturally healthy nation everyone should be engaged in the decision making process and one of the reasons we don't is that there are no papers presenting the affairs of that Parliament in an attractive manner.

Wouldn't you read a well written sketch piece on a debate about petrol prices? Sure, so would I. But do we get them?

Naw. Well not in the purely Scottish papers anyhow. O.K some wee terrier might chase down some crass wee tale or two over whether Wendy has taken responsibility for a nine hundred quid donation last whenever it was , but that's not in depth political evaluation… that's just pratting about.

I'm not alone in my anger. Yes, anger.

Both our present and previous First Ministers were in despair about the situation, sharing my concern at the lack of a decent pan Scotland paper.

The figures say it all. Not only is The Herald now only selling around seventy thousand copies a day, it's hardly printing any more than that. And the Scotsman's even worse.

I can seem to nail down the exact figure but I have a sense that ten years ago the Herald used to sell about twice that.

And here's an even more terrifying fact. The Editor of the Scotsman spends, so I am told, most of his week ends at his home somewhere near Portsmouth.

Good luck to him.

But any fool can diagnose a cold. It's curing it that's the challenge.

So what's the way ahead?

First, we have to stop this puerile tribalism between Edinburgh and Glasgow, and we have to move from ninety minute nationalism to a sense of common purpose.

We live in a tiny nation at a time when newspapers are going out of fashion and everyone's reading the news on the web.

The purpose of newspapers is changing. Reporters will, or rather should, become newsgatherers for their local patch for it then be disseminated primarily through small print runs and then through huge, global, accessing of websites.

It's time for a seven day a week, efficient and effective news gathering service covering the central belt of Scotland and servicing those kinds of outlets.

It has to have substance, be readable and have all of Scotland as its hinterland.

And people have to recognise it as being vital to the cultural health of our nation and support it.

Wild talk, but will anything actually happen?

Well there's no reason why it shouldn't.

We share a multi billion pound economy that needs a vibrant political mechanism and a decent newsgathering service has to be part of that mechanism.

I can think of half a dozen leading Scottish businessmen who would be only too delighted to back such an initiative, even if were to lose money.

Ours is an economy that has the financial resources to support such a paper, most reasonably through some kind of trust like, for example, the Irish Times, and it only lacks a bit of political initiative to deliver that product.

Anyone out there share my vision?

MAXWELL MACLEOD