The slide towards probable extinction

It is the great tartan media paradox: Scottish Nationalists rule the roost in Edinburgh, Scots think themselves increasingly Scottish rather than British, Scotland and England drift ever further apart. Yet Scotland's once-powerful and distinctive indigenous newspapers are in a relentless decline, dangerously reminiscent of the sort that proved terminal for the old Clydeside shipyards.

On current trends, if Scotland ever did divorce from the UK, it could end up the only independent country in the world without vibrant independent newspapers of its own; its citizens preferring instead the tartan editions of the newspapers of another country.

The latest audited (ABC) sales figures suggest the pace of decline is increasing. The Scotsman is down another 8% on January of last year and now has headline sales of under 56,000. The reality on the newsstands is even worse: strip out the bulks and the small amount of non-Scottish sales and industry sources tell me that there is now only one day a week (Friday) on which the Scotsman sells over 50,000 in Scotland. On Mondays and Thursdays it regularly sells less than 45,000.

Since Johnston Press bought the Edinburgh-based Scotsman and its sister titles two years ago, sales of the Scotsman have slumped 17%. In the decade during which I helped run the Scotsman for the Barclay Brothers, we managed to lose 14%.

Matters are only marginally better at the Scotsman's Glasgow rival, the Herald. It lost another 6% year on year in sales last month - and is now down 12% since it started declaring monthly sales figures in 2004. Scotland's two other big-city qualities - the Dundee Courier and the Aberdeen Press & Journal - are also in precipitous decline.

Yet, while there is carnage on the home front, curiously, the tartan editions of the London nationals continue to prosper. The Scottish edition of the Sunday Times now regularly outsells the Johnston-owned Scotland on Sunday, while the Sunday Herald, launched with such high hopes less than a decade ago, struggles to stay above 50,000.

In January, the once-mighty Daily Record saw sales only recently over 600,000 slump to under 400,000. It has lost its accolade as Scotland's biggest daily paper to the Scottish edition of the Sun. Even the Scottish edition of the Daily Mail, historically not a strong brand north of the border, sells around 115,000 - almost as many as the Scotsman and Herald combined. The Times and the Telegraph, which do not have full-blown Scottish editions, still continue to do quite nicely, selling around 50,000 between them.

From a historic perspective, the decline of Scotland's indigenous newspapers is breathtaking. In the late 1970s, at the height of the first modern clamour for devolution, the (then Glasgow) Herald peaked at almost 130,000 and the Scotsman at almost 100,000. Both papers have lost almost half their sales in a generation; no London-based quality has done anything like as badly.

Now the Herald and the Scotsman are in the hands of local newspaper cost-cutters. Once both titles regarded themselves as on a par with the best of Fleet Street, striving to cover Scottish, national and international agendas. During my time at the Scotsman Group I insisted the editors provided extensive coverage of Westminster, the City, foreign affairs (we had our own correspondents in Washington and Kosovo) and culture - as well as all things Scottish. Today both titles look more like the Yorkshire Post (also owned by Johnston) than the Times or Telegraph - regional newspapers with only cursory, usually wire-service, coverage of events outside their region. Cutting costs has become the norm - the Scotsman recently banned the use of first-class stamps - and rolling programmes of redundancies seem never-ending.

Yet there has not been a squeak out of the Scottish Parliament - perhaps because, though the Scottish press is in decline, it docilely subscribes unanimously once more to the Scottish political elite's liberal-left consensus.

Media commentators - who used to be quite vocal whenever I changed as much as a comma - have stayed silent. Those journalists who thought all they had to do to begin a new golden age was unfurl a banner saying "Andrew Neil has left the building" after the Barclays sold out for a nice profit must be a tad disillusioned. The decline is likely to gather pace, as the London nationals continue to invest in technology and editorial for their Scottish editions.

News International has just opened a £60m all-colour printing plant east of Glasgow on which it is now printing the Times as well as the Sun; the Telegraph will also begin printing at the plant soon. No Scottish paper can match these printing capabilities: if either or both ever started producing full-scale Scottish editions, the prospects for the Herald and Scotsman would be grim indeed.

There was another way. When we still thought it worth fighting the good fight north of the border, we proposed that the Scotsman and Herald groups merge. The titles would remain distinctive but the back-office functions would join up, giving us the scale and resources to take on the English invaders.

The Scottish political establishment was universally opposed - and behind the scenes Gordon Brown made it clear that SMG (then owners of the Herald, and looking for a quick sale) was on no account to sell to the Barclays. In doing so, he probably condemned the Scottish newspaper industry to extinction.

Andrew Neil The Guardian,