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Former Daily Record and Sunday Mail managing editor asks what has gone wrong

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By The Drum Team, Editorial

June 9, 2011 | 3 min read

Noel Young was the editor of the Sunday Mail when its weekly sales reached its high water mark of around 1m. Here he asseses what has changed at the paper and its Daily Record stablemate.

However, with 90 journalists about to go, what should NOT be an issue is the use of Mirror copy in the Record as is now proposed. In the great go-go days of the paper, it was Mirror copy that gave the Record backbone.

From columnist Cassandra - probably the best newspaper column ever - to showbusiness writer Donald Zec to the marvellous Marje Proops. - they were all in the Record. When a London-subbed version of an international story arrived, as often as not we dropped our own version and put the London version in. We called it a "Lonsub".

We even carried Mirror Page One leaders. I remember when a Cecil-King inspired leader, headlined "Enough is Enough" calling for the ousting of the Harold Wilson Government, was stopped by wiser heads at the Mirror when it was already running on our presses .

I literally had to go down to the press hall and yell "Stop the Presses". Shame on me, I didn't keep even keep a copy of the offending paper.

All this - and great and enthusiastic reporting of Scottish stories kept the Record sizzling. We had staff men everywhere, from Inverness to Dumfries. We were aggressively Scottish where it mattered: blanket coverage of the trial of mass murderer Peter Manuel was an early example.

Remember, our main opposition was the mid-market Daily Express, selling 600,000 when the Record was a lowly (!) 450,000. We beat them out of the park. The Daily Record was the Scottish paper for everyone, something that simply doesn't exist today.

In the 90s one editor Terry Quinn turned the paper into a lightweight design-led creation. The next man in, Martin Clarke, took the paper sharply upmarket with much longer Daily Mail type stories. Big changes: the Daily Record of the past was gone forever.

Before the circulation crunch really started, the Record was able to raise £4 million from its readers from all walks of life to build the country's first children's hospice. Endell Laird was the editor. THAT was the accomplishment of a paper which truly represented all of Scotland.

Bruce Waddell has a huge task on his hands. The Record should be the paper for all Scotland still . If its newsdesk resources were concentrated on big issues like the Steven Purcell affair, if it could find a common cause which unites the population, and with writers the calibre of Ruth Wishart, it could perhaps find its way back into the hands of the whole country.

Scotland, now more than ever, needs a Scottish national paper (with a small 'n'). It could still be the Record - but it's going to be tough.

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