Readers' ombudsman : As you can see, we've had a bit of a makeover – hope you like it

Published on Sunday 18 May 2008 22:28

TRICKY business, change. A widely held view is that people don't like change and are resistant to it. It alters comfort zones and people can feel like they are losing something they have become familiar with. But it is impossible to improve anything without changing it.

Society is geared towards improvement and, therefore, is constantly changing. The whole theory of evolution is about change to adapt to better fit into the world in which we live. And today, The Scotsman has made some changes.

I know some people will cry, "Not more changes", perhaps not unreasonably. So I thought it might be useful to go through the changes and explain the thinking that brought us to introduce them.

But first, a small diversion. On 10 May, we published a 12-page supplement announcing a series of debates we are to have around the country on burning issues confronting Scotland today, and a restatement of our values as a newspaper. Of course, it is impossible to talk about The Scotsman without looking at its long and honourable history. In that supplement, we showed a series of Scotsman front pages from 1817 to the present day.

What struck me most forcibly was the huge change in appearance – and yet it was possible to discern the continuous thread that linked the first paper to the present-day paper. There is change but continuity.

We are carrying on the evolution that was apparent in those pages.

The changes are based on long discussions between people in the Scotsman building, outside experts and on very intensive market research we carried out.

One of the strongest messages that research brought to us was that readers were not always aware of exactly what we have to offer in terms of breadth of material, and that sometimes it was difficult to find the various key pillars of the newspaper or to navigate from one section of interest to another.

So, in order to communicate what we offer every day in a far more straightforward way, we have come to the changes in the flow of the paper.

Page 2 will highlight what is in our news, opinion, business and sport sections, as well as the supplements we carry that day. We have created a new, bigger Life & Arts section and that, too, will be flagged up on page 2.

From now on, the news section will contain only news; the columnists that used to appear on page 9 now appears in our new Life & Arts section. Agenda has moved in to an expanded Debate & Opinion section.

Business, too, has moved, slightly more towards the front of the paper, but it will continue to contain our extensive business news coverage as well as all the current favourites such as Scrutineer and our detailed shares and markets coverage. Farming now has its own dedicated slot after the professional pages.

Then comes Life & Arts, our expanded features and culture section, still with the old favourites but with a few new elements also thrown in. Obituaries are now the page after Life & Arts.

The run of the rest of the paper remains the same, to our bigger sports section from Tuesday to Friday.

Most of our new sections will now start with their own "front page", just to leave readers in no doubt that they are getting into a new section, and the other sections will be signposted at the top of that page.

We think the changes underpin our commitment to be the Scottish paper for news, sport, business and the arts, and the forum for informed debate and discussion about all the matters that concern Scotland and the Scots.

We know it might take a little bit of getting used to, but we hope you like the changes, and we hope they improve our paper for you.

Please let me know what you think; always interested to hear.