The Sun editor David Dinsmore urges print industry to avoid ‘talking ourselves down’
The Sun editor David Dinsmore has urged colleagues in the print to cease ‘talking ourselves down’ during an interview with The Scotsman before addressing a marketing Society Scotland dinner in Glasgow.
Dinsmore said: “We have done a very good job as an industry in talking ourselves down, probably for about the last 15 years. We need to change that.”
His comments are being read as part of a PR drive to bolster industry solidarity after rival media organisations opted to distance themselves from Rupert Murdoch’s suite of UK titles amidst allegations of phone hacking and bribery of public officials.
Pressed on the thorny issue of Scottish independence Dinsmore was less forthcoming however, adopting a ‘wait and see’ stance – reflecting uncertainty as to the public’s mood. He said: “There is an awful long way to go, and it is an exceptionally divisive issue. A lot of thought has to go into positioning on an issue like this.
“The thing that really strikes me is what a divided country Scotland is,” he says. “There is a real east-west divide, there is a real north-south divide, and there is also this strong religious divide in the west of Scotland that you just kind of take for granted if you grow up here, but it doesn’t exist in other places. We have now added another division with Yes/No.”
One area of greater certainty for Dinsmore is that of the tabloid’s use of page 3 models, something its editor has pledged to retain ‘for as long as the readers want it’.