McLellan news leaves Linklater ‘sad’

A FORMER editor of The Scotsman is reported regretting the axing of the paper’s editor-in-chief post, and the placing on leave last week of its occupant, John McLellan.

Magnus Linklater – who recently stepped down as Scotland editor of The Times – is quoted by The Drum media and marketing magazine, as saying: “I feel very sad about John going. I thought that he’d stabilised The Scotsman after a long period of many editors and different changes of direction, it not quite knowing what it was trying to do, John got it back to being a good, fairly solid, newspaper, which is what The Scotsman always was and always should be. It was a great sadness to see him step down.”

Linklater was editor of the paper between 1988 and 1994. Since then, there has been Andrew Jaspan, Jim Seaton, Martin Clarke, Alan Ruddock, Tim Luckhurst, Rebecca Hardy, Iain Martin, John McGurk and Mike Gilson, as well as McLellan.

PS Read Kenneth Roy on the relatively rapid turnover of editors at The Scotsman, in his website, Scottish Review.