Swedes to set up Scottish daily paper

0 Comments | Sunday Herald, The, Mar 26, 2000 | by Kenny Kemp

A SWEDISH media giant is to launch a Scottish national daily newspaper. It will be helped by a group of senior media executives who have split from Trinity Mirror, owners of the Daily Record and Sunday Mail.

The paper, backed by the Bonnier Group, Europe's ninth biggest media player, will try and break the regional strangleholds of The Herald, The Scotsman, The Press and Journal and the Dundee Courier by appealing to Scotland's decision-makers. The group already owns a string of newspapers in Sweden, Finland, Denmark, Lithuanian, Latvia and Russia.

When it is launched, possibly this autumn, the newspaper will appear in one of the most crowded markets in the world at a time when daily circulations are in steady decline. However, this does not deter John Penman, the new venture's editor, who was formerly a political editor at The Scotsman and senior executive at the Record.

"This will be a newspaper which will cover the whole of Scotland," he said. "It will be aimed at the key opinion formers, politicians and business people in Scotland." Penman shortly expects to announce a list of distinguished journalists who will join the paper.

The Bonnier Group is involved in books, film, magazines and internet publishing, but its crown jewel is Dagens Industri, the daily business newspaper and Sweden's answer to the Financial Times. Penman hopes to apply the same European format to his new, still unnamed project.

"We have 65% of our volume in Sweden and only 10% outside the Nordic territories," said Carl-Johan Bonnier, chairman of the family- run company. "So there is plenty of room for expansion."

The project, likely to be a five or six day-a-week publication, originally involved Penman and Jim Chisholm, the managing director of Business Media Ventures, when they worked for the Daily Record and Sunday Mail. Chisholm, a Mirror marketing executive, had strong ties with Sweden through the World Association of Newspapers.

The Mirror Group, which had originally planned a weekly Scottish financial paper, had been working on the project with Bonnier for nearly two years. But when the group was bought by the Trinity newspaper group last year, it began to look closely at its Anderston Quay operations and saw that the core products were in trouble. The Daily Record's circulation has recently dipped to well below 600,000 a day.

Trinity management wanted to concentrate on its core activity and aborted the joint venture with Bonnier. However, Chisholm and Penman were approached to go it alone with the backing of the Swedes. They and other personnel recently resigned from the Daily Record.

But Penman denies any split with the Trinity Mirror management over the launch of the new paper. "It is as amicable as it could be," he said. "Trinity Mirror will be doing contract work for us in terms of printing, research and circulation, so it is hardly a fall-out."

The paper is likely to be headquartered in Edinburgh. Penman was coy about a title and a launch date, but the Daily Nation is a possibility. "One thing I've learned is never to say when you're launching and not to reveal your target circulation," he said. "All I can say is we intend to reach 90-95% of our market of leading business people, politicians, lawyers and the media." Sales for the established Scotsman are 75,000, while The Herald sells 100,000.

The Bonnier Group was started by a German-born bookshop owner who migrated to Copenhagen, then Stockholm, nearly two centuries ago. The Bonnier Group is now the most powerful home-grown media player in the Nordic territories. In April 1998 it moved to gain complete ownership of the Swedish media firm Marieberg, which controls 25% of the country's newspaper market. Penman will be able to use Bonnier's other newspapers to bring in strong international business coverage.

"We are looking at being innovative and entrepreneurial and a one- stop shop for those wanting high-quality financial information in Scotland," said Penman. Apart from sport, the paper will cover the usual areas.

The task will not be easy. Scottish Media Group, which owns the Herald, Sunday Herald and STV, and Scotsman Publications, owned by the Barclay Brothers, will resist a new publication. But Stewart Feather, joint MD of Feather Brooksbank, Scotland's largest media buyer, believes there might now be a market for a pan-Scotland daily. "The market has got used to new players and neither The Scotsman nor The Herald have got a foothold in each other's city."