New Scots paper in crowded market

SCOTLAND'S CROWDED newspaper market became busier yesterday with the launch of a broadsheet, The Sunday Herald. Though there seems to be room for another title, there is some doubt whether the seven-section Sunday Herald is the paper to do it.

Edited by Andrew Jaspan, a former Observer editor, it is backed by the Glasgow-based Scottish Media Group, which owns the STV and Grampian television companies and publishes the Herald daily.

Scots already have 12 Sunday titles, six broadsheet. Around three-quarters of Scots read Sundays compared with less than two-thirds in England.

Tom Brown, a commentator with the Glasgow-based tabloid Daily Record, said: "My first reaction ... was not so much Big Bang as a solid thump. It looks better than it really is. It's a triumph of design over content. It's pretty to look at, but the content left me cold. The paper is going to have to fight hard if it is to create a gap for itself ... Even the shade of blue on the front page looks like Scotland on Sunday."

Although all the London-produced Sundays will be ranged against it, The Sunday Herald's principal rival is Scotland on Sunday, published in Edinburgh and which sells 125,000 copies.

Rob Brown, deputy editor of The Sunday Herald, insisted that the new paper was for the whole of Scotland.

"Glasgow is the media capital of Scotland and it's where people would expect a national paper to be produced. This is Scotland's only quality Sunday newspaper now that Scotland on Sunday has dumbed down the way it has."