A slump in readership prompted executives to consider scrapping the Sunday brand to focus on weekday title

Glasgow’s Herald is merging its editorial teams with its sister Sunday newspaper, reflecting ongoing troubles in the newspaper business and the impact the independence campaign is having on the Scottish media industry.

Staff at the pro-independence Sunday Herald were informed at a meeting last Wednesday that they will now be expected to also work for the weekday title, according to sources at the company, with the possibility that the two newspapers will be formally combined.

One option under consideration would see the Sunday Herald rebranded as the Herald on Sunday. It could then share a similar editorial line – and potentially broadsheet print format – as the daily newspaper, which backed a no vote in the 2014 referendum on independence.

The Sunday Herald, which currently prints in tabloid, has always had a different outlook and editorial stance to the broadsheet daily Herald. It was the only Scottish newspaper to back independence during the 2014 referendum and was rewarded as circulation doubled in the wake of the contest. However, readership has since slipped back amid repeated criticism from prominent online pro-independence campaigners who feel the paper has turned on the cause.

Those declining sales have prompted executives at the newspaper, which is owned by publisher Newsquest, to consider scrapping the separate Sunday Herald brand and stop having dedicated Sunday newspaper journalists.

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Another option under consideration is to extend The National, Newsquest’s pro-independence daily newspaper, into a seven-day operation designed to appeal to pro-independence newspaper readers. The Sunday Herald’s previous editor Richard Walker, who oversaw its transition to a pro-independence tabloid, is mooted as the Sunday National’s new editor.

The National’s weekday editions sell fewer than 10,000 copies a day and are produced on a tight budget with a skeleton staff, but would be expected to attract some of the Sunday Herald’s pro-independence writers.



The Herald did not respond to a request for comment.

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Despite operating with a small staff, the Sunday Herald has retained a reputation for exclusive investigations. However, it has faced a series of departures in recent months, focusing attention on its future.



On Thursday, editor Neil Mackay confirmed after several months off work on sick leave that he would be leaving the job due to ill health and would switch to being a writer across all of the Herald’s titles. News editor Angela Haggerty, a veteran of the pro-independence CommonSpace website, lasted three months as Sunday Herald news editor before leaving.

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In May the paper admitted it had made the wrong decision after it chose to report on a pro-independence march through Glasgow by using a photo of a small number of unionist counter-protestors on its front page.

However, the scale of online criticism over the decision prompted departing editor Mackay, who has been with the paper since it launched, to launch a strong defence of his newspaper. He said the abuse his team had received over the decision showed “complete disconnect from reality and has echoes of the worst of the online world as exhibited by the Trump campaign”.

“Staff were shouted at over the phone, and foul language was used towards them,” he wrote. “One email said staff should be skinned alive. And there was a constant refrain that the Sunday Herald was some treacherous false friend of the SNP and the Yes movement.

“There have been a number of comments made that the direction of the Sunday Herald is changing. If that means we are a more open, inclusive newspaper in an often bitter, divided and prejudiced world, then that is true.”

Scotland’s traditional newspapers are also coming under pressure from the growing success of the the Times’ Scottish edition, which has been hiring staff from other outlets and now outsells the Edinburgh-based Scotsman.