Michael Johnston, president of the Scottish Newspaper Society, has explained that it will lobby MSP’s ‘intensively’ to prevent Scottish Government plans to move advertising of public notices from newspapers online.

The Scottish Government is to consult over the move that public notices will be published on a new website, costing the newspaper industry millions of pounds in revenue each year.

Johnston explained to The Drum yesterday that he had just returned from a cross party briefing chaired by Pauline McNeil MSP at the parliament and that the industry had been giving evidence to the Parliament's Education, Life Long Learning and Culture Committee attended by himself, Bill Stevens of Bill Stevens of Scottish & Universal and Jim Raeburn, director of the Scottish Daily Newspaper Society (SNS) during which the subject of public notices was a major topic.

The NUJ also gave evidence, Johnston added.

“All Johnston Press Scotland editors have been writing to their MSPs and I know this approach is being taken with other groups. Jim is writing to all MSPs on behalf of the SNS and I am writing from Johnston Press,” Johnston continued.

“The key issue is that this proposal is anti-democratic. While the industry freely admits that there is a revenue implication, our overwhelming objections is the change is unnecessary and not in the public interest given the lack of public trust in state funded websites, their low usage, Scotland's poor broadband penetration and, equally importantly, the poor take up of broadband, particularly by the most vulnerable and excluded sections of Scottish society. It is worth noting that broadband penetration in Scotland massively lags the UK overall at 60% v 68%. The figure for Glasgow is just 39% while, from memory, Inverclyde is even worse at less than 30%, so now is not the time to put all the eggs in the internet basket, particularly unappetizing, hard to find sites run by councils.”

Johnston continued to add that  in contrast to the internet, local newspapers are read by 85% of the population and they are still considered the nation's most trusted medium while saying that only 4% of Scots use the internet as their principle source of news against the 28% who use newspapers.   

He concluded that the Scottish newspaper titles were in unison with both the SNS and NUJ opposing the Government’s plan.

Johnston , division managing director of Johnston Press, is the inaugural president of The Scottish Newspaper Society which was formed following the merger of the Scottish Daily Newspaper Society and Scottish Newspaper Publishers Association.
Tim Blott, managing director of Newsquest's Herald and Times Group is vice-president of the Society while Jim Raeburn has been appointed director.