I'm Launching a New Newspaper

Stewart Kirkpatrick: In the next few weeks, I will be launching a new Scottish newspaper.

I know this seems like madness, given what we're always told about our slice of the market being tighter than your average newspaper finance director at Christmas.

However, there is a substantial gap in the market. There is room - in fact, a desperate need - for an online, heavyweight publication committed to quality journalism. Scotland needs an intelligent title that uses the internet, not fights against it.

What I am not doing is reinventing the Herald, Record or Scotsman. Nor am I doing a Business AM. I have not taken on massive debts to buy printing presses. I have not acquired lavish offices. I have not hired vast numbers of support staff. Nor have I combed the newsrooms of the land for weel kent faces to fill the ranks of associate editor (this), assistant editor (that) or managing editor (the other).

No, this newspaper is designed to succeed in the new publishing environment, not the old one. We want to avoid doing the things that newspapers do wrong. As a result, our publication is very different from what has gone before.

First of all, our paper element will not be printed on a daily or even weekly basis. We will use print because it is a fantastic medium but we will use it in innovative, unexpected ways.

Secondly, we will focus on specialist areas of expertise. This publication will not try to be all things to all readers. It will not cover every cough and sniffle of the news landscape. It will zero in on what we think is important and leave the rest to other publications. If there's a story not covered by our specialists we will show our readers where to find it elsewhere. To use the 'nu meedja' jargon, we will focus on what we do best and curate the rest.

Thirdly, and most importantly, we will focus on high-quality, in-depth journalism written by established experts. In many years working in on- and offline newsrooms in Scotland and London, I've built up a fantasy newsroom in my head of talented journalists that I'd employ if I ever could. And now I am in that position. I've got out my journalism Panini sticker album and am merrily pasting in silky-skilled stars.

We've signed up leading writers, respected authorities in their fields and asked them to let rip. We want them to tell the stories that the churning maelstrom of the old-fashioned newsroom never allowed. We're interested in quality, not filling space. We're not worried about what's in the other papers this morning, we want to be told something we don't know already.

Scotland has always produced excellent journalists. It has always been an innovative, enterprising nation alive to new technologies. We seem to have forgotten how to combine these things.

This new project will prove that there is a future for high-quality journalism - if both imaginative and nimble.

Stewart Kirkpatrick is a former editor of scotsman.com and content marketing director of w00tonomy.com