Scottish Standard closes down
Nationalist weekly newspaper the Scottish Standard has closed its doors less than two months after the publication of its first issue.
Staff at the paper, which is owned by Belfast-based Flagship Media, were informed of the decision to close yesterday (Monday) afternoon by publisher and managing director Derek Carstairs. The closure will lead to the loss of between 30-40 jobs.
The Standard was launched in March with a print-run of 50, 000 copies and distribution around Scotland. On its launch editor Alex MacLeod positioned the mid-week paper as “like a Sunday newspaper, but without the supplements. What we have to do is get more exclusives, do more investigations, carry more editorial campaigns and more news feature stories.”
However, shortly after the launch it was rumoured that the paper was not reaching its intended sales targets. Subsequently the paper’s print run was said to have been drastically cut back, and last week several redundancies were announced, including business editor Nick Bibby.
The closure follows strong denials from Carstairs that the paper was about to fold.