View across the Outer Harbour of Stornoway

Tuesday 3 November 2015

NaBloPoMo - day #3

November rules, and it rules foggily. Fog also shrouds the identity of those who gained control of the Twitter and Facebook accounts of our esteemed weekly paper, the Stornoway Gazette, aged 99 come next January. Apparently, there is considerable disquiet about outsourcing of work, such as design, journalism and what not. The editor was called unpleasant names, the paper was referred to as having declined from an esteemed broadsheet to a dire publication. To top it all, the Gazette shop, at the corner of Francis Street and Kenneth Street, is to close at the end of the year, since it is not seen to be commercially viable. Somebody is seriously rocking the boat, and although Johnston Press (who publish the Gazette) say they are dealing with it, the Gazette's Twitter account continues to display the last utterances of the disgruntled employee. Those who are supposed to be in the know of course say 'It wasn't me guv, honest'. In this small community (Stornoway's population is about 9,000), everybody knows everybody else, and as a result you tend to sit on criticism, or ventilate it in limited circles. This little spat made it as far as the webpages of the BBC and the Glasgow Herald, one of the largest papers in Scotland.