Media, Communication and Performing Arts
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Item A PAPER OF RECORD: CONVERGENCE AND COMMUNITY AT THE GLASGOW HERALD(2025) Silver, ChrsitopherFounded in Glasgow in 1783, the Herald is among the oldest continuously published newspapers in the English-speaking world. In the late 20th century, the paper sought to cast off its reputation as an organ of once powerful local elites; with the goal of becoming the preeminent national paper of record for Scotland. This transformation necessitated an expansion in the range and extent of the Herald’s journalistic output: with a particular emphasis on culture, high literary standards, and the role of specialist correspondents with the requisite expertise to scrutinise state and civil society institutions. These developments form part of a cultural turn in Scottish journalism, facilitated by structural modernisation and energised by prefigurative impulses that emerged in the context of growing demands for enhanced political autonomy, alongside a broader revival of national identity and culture in Scotland. However, a seemingly resilient and expanding national media system, consolidated in the post-war era, was unprepared for the advent of global media convergence. Thus in 2003 Newsquest – a wholly owned subsidiary of US conglomerate Gannett – purchased the Herald and went on to substantially retrench the title’s editorial operations, resulting in a significant reduction in the range and extent of its journalistic output. This project combines a study of documentary and oral history sources which together constitute a cultural history of the Herald. Based on analysis of these sources, this project shows how Herald journalists sustained an interpretive community which resisted the pressures of media convergence by restating journalistic values and valorising institutional memory, while foregrounding the cultural value of the title. This project also situates the Herald’s cultural history and its transformations within wider theoretical debates about community, the public sphere, and modernity. Drawing on these fruitful connections, this thesis concludes by conceptualising four distinct transformations in journalistic culture and practice. These findings are grounded in the Herald’s particular interpretive community, but they also underline the broader salience of the journalistic record amid the pressures and possibilities of global media convergence.