A Scotsman on the make
Posted on
February 25, 2013 by
Rev. Stuart Campbell
We’re indebted to an alert reader for pointing us towards this intriguing story:
Click the words for more details about how an increasingly discredited Scottish mainstream media is resorting to desperate measures to survive, then consider if you might want to fund more honest reporting, lest you be left with none at all.
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Mmm – I had noticed that Google News (which I personalise with a Scotland + SNP tag) has dropped all Scotsman articles from their headlines, although some of their offerings do rank top as Scotland on Sunday.
Mind you, all it seems to mean is that we get Daily Express and Daily Record SNP accused stories headlining on Google, rather than the Scotsman rants.
Plus ca change….
That’s a pretty signifiant development and it gives a bit of insight into the ethos of JP. If it wasn’t for “angry cybernat” clicks, they’s be in real trouble
Just read the linked article – I can’t claim to understand all the techy stuff! – but if I am reading this right, the Scotsman is in deepest doodoo! Falling print sales, and now a HUGE hit on its web traffic. The end is, as they say, nigh!
It couldn’t have happened to a more deserving rag.
“f it wasn’t for “angry cybernat” clicks, they’s be in real trouble”
If we all ignore them they might, quite literally, go away then
Had that happen to a website i’ve had for going on ten years now.
After two years doing well in the rankings it suddenly could not be found in the first several pages of google returns – even when one entered the very unique domain name, other sites that listed it came first with a direct link to the url nowhere in sight.
Revenues from advertising were obliterated. It took around 3-4 years to undo the error. Only an pre-existing customer base saved it from the knackers yard. Despite many enquiries to google! no explanation was ever forthcoming.
All I can say about the Scotsman’s predicament is that it could not happened to a more deserving bunch of folks.
With respect to their propagandizing sold as journalism, the heat and the scrutiny needs to be ramped up considerably higher yet. The issue has to become their mendacity in their confection of stories and memes that have no substantive acquaintance with the truth.
THEY are the issue, and it is they who present an existential threat to the campaign for independence, not Darling et al.
Confront the danger directly – name it and shame it again and again and again. Personalize it, for it is individuals who are making the decisions to present themselves and honest perveyors of fact and fair opinion, while inflicting blatant lies and propaganda on an unsuspecting public.
The issue in the end is not the lies and the spin, but the failure of these propagandists to offer disclosure of their bias and vested interests.
If the electorate receive a flier through the door encouraging them to vote NO and offering a hundred reasons for doing so, its effects are marginal because it is clearly recognizable as propaganda and folks consider that in assessing the veracity of the claims and arguments made therein.
But the BBC and the Guardian, and the Herald, and the Scotsman, and on, present themselves as tellers of truth – as newspapers and journalists, rather than as the enablers, disseminators, and creators of propaganda.
And they are not about to disclose the truth of this, for they well know that the most effective propaganda is propaganda that is not recognised as propaganda by its victims.
Aplinal says:
25 February, 2013 at 9:40 am
Just read the linked article – I can’t claim to understand all the techy stuff! – but if I am reading this right, the Scotsman is in deepest doodoo! Falling print sales, and now a HUGE hit on its web traffic. The end is, as they say, nigh!
It couldn’t have happened to a more deserving rag.
In simple terms Alpinal. Google doesn’t just list sites on how popular they are, it also works on trusted links (other reputable sites that link to them).
JP allegedly betrayed Google’s trust by whoring (I hate that term but it does best describe) it’s trusted pagerank to the highest bidder. This kind of behaviour is totally unacceptabe and immoral.
There are litteraly millions of sites out their like WOS and even small businesses who put a lot of time, cost and effort into acheiving what JP have allegedly sold to Interflora for financial gain.
Google take a very dim view of this and have rightly decided to strip JP of their trusted status.
It wouldn’t surprise me if JP also bought their pagerank from elsewhere which is just as bad as selling your own to allow others to cheat the system.
They are indeed in the smelly stuff. I would expect to see their advertising reduced to no more than a google Ads account (If they will even allow JP to have one!). With their current traffic that will not support the business for long.
Edit:
Just had a look at their site and it appears they have nothing more than a google ads account!
This might be good news for us, but what about the long-term implications for serious journalism in Scotland? Perhaps I am stretching things a bit by describing the Scotsman’s output as such, but hopefully you know what I mean.
A business which stubbornly tries to sell people something they don’t want is doomed to failure. (Worth reflecting on that as we all attempt to identify individuals who may or may not be persuaded to vote YES!).
The Scotsman owners are in a jam. If they stick with their editorial approach, they’ll continue to fail – but they can’t stomach changing their approach to offer readers content that reflects their real intersts. It’s not a sustainable business model……
They can still spout their biased nonsense, as long as its placed alongside alternative opinion balancing it up – and as long as it’s all presented as OPINION. That might enable their news reporters to actually report some news in a reasoned and balanced fashioned.
Pipe dream? Maybe, but it would be disappointing to lose The Scotsman title. It should be one of our national institutions.
“Well,” said the editorial board of the Scotsman, “things could be worse. At least we don’t have Magnus Gardham!”
It may just have been luck with the search wording, but I just asked Google for “Scottish political media” and No1 on the website was Wings over Scotland followed by six Guardian entries then Newsnet.
I love the fact that Newsnet Scotland is just behind the Herald and actually ahead of The Sun and the Telegraph in terms of its ranking for the term “Scottish News”. I rarely go there any more, but it’s still nice to see that, online at least, pro-indy media is taking it to the MSM.
How long until Wings is at the top, above the BBC?
Incidentally, this should be a reminder for us bloggers – when you link to these sites, it helps their pagerank. Perhaps we should have a moratorium on linking to the Scotsman (and maybe the Herald and BBC too) across the blogosphere?
I have WoS links on my two ‘esoteric’ blogs (nothing to do with politics) and my LinkedIn page, precisely to increase pagerank. I’m doing my bit.
@Rabb
I am working outwith Scotland, but want to do something!
Thanks, I think!
@Major
Is that as simple as adding the link on the gmail footer, or LinkedIn page – or is it a bit more complicated!
Major: Cheers!
Instead of linking, would it not be better to copy and paste the article referred to? That way, the page is only viewed once by the poster. Or is that not cricket?
BTW. Craig Murray has responded to my plea re the stolen 6000sq miles of Scottish waters. See comment at ‘Pushing at an Open Door’
Doug Daniel says:
25 February, 2013 at 11:22 am
Incidentally, this should be a reminder for us bloggers – when you link to these sites, it helps their pagerank. Perhaps we should have a moratorium on linking to the Scotsman (and maybe the Herald and BBC too) across the blogosphere?
Doug,
That is a fantastic point. It’s exactly what the MSM rely on for pageranking. The less blogs and external links into them the lower their pagerank and listing will become.
Bloggs and twitter etc are the driving force behind the fortunes of these sites. The less interest and inward links to them the lower their ranking in search engines.
I would urge all bloggers an SM users to link in to WOS where possible. A top tip would be to use suitable text to link to the site. See examples below of good and not so good ways of linking in.
Good: Scottish news
Not so good: http://wingsland.podgamer.com
The good link has the keywords “Scottish News” which the googlebot can read. That link will ensure that when someone types in “Scottish News” into the google homepage, Google will look at it’s highest ranking sites associated with “Scottish News”.
Where WOS becomes the most trusted and relevant site it will be at the top of the pile
Simples!!
@Aplinal
My blogs are done in Blogger and in the Design dashboard you can go to Layout and ‘add a gadget’ so that it creates a box where you want it and then you select the ‘link list’ one, which you can then add links to as appropriate.
As for LinkedIn, you can add up to three links to web pages in your profile and I have WoS as one of them.
Thanks Major: in hand
LMAO Google search for “SNP accussed” no longer has 250 Scotsman hits in the first ten pages. Shetland Times even gets a mention lol.
It is with a wry chuckle and a smattering of Schadenfreude that I say the Scotsman does not come out of this smelling of Roses does it?
Valentines day ended up being a case of V.D. for them it seems.
I do feel for the few good journos who are associated with this rag though. It is their lively hood too that is at stake here.
“This might be good news for us, but what about the long-term implications for serious journalism in Scotland? Perhaps I am stretching things a bit by describing the Scotsman’s output as such, but hopefully you know what I mean.”
“Perhaps we should have a moratorium on linking to the Scotsman (and maybe the Herald and BBC too) across the blogosphere?”
There’s the conflict. I have no desire to destroy Scottish journalism, only to keep it honest. If we kill the Scotsman and Herald, an independent Scotland would have no non-tabloid newspapers – because I can’t see anybody starting up a new one – and a lot of good writers and columnists would no longer have a source of revenue. That’s a Pyrrhic victory.
(Some bad ones wouldn’t either, but I’m not sure I want to throw Iain Macwhirter, Ian Bell and others out with the bathwater.)
For now, WingsLand will still be linking to stories, except in really offensive cases where (as previously) we might use Google cache versions instead. If you don’t want to click on them, don’t.
You can install browser plugins that let you right-click on a link and choose to go to cached versions directly. Here’s the one I use:
link to addons.mozilla.org
In fact, I might make this a post.
@pmcrek
Hilarious. The Scotsman has effectively vanished from google.
Chickens have very much come home to roost.
In terms of concerns over decent scottish newspapers… The Herald will pull through; it’s running an increasing number of pro-indy stories in addition to pro-union ones. Keep that up and it should survive.
So that we are not accused of being fixated by the Hootsman, and to minimize clicks, here is the latest offering in today’s Telegraph. What are these guys on? It can’t be good for them in the long-term, or anyone else. What was that about single and double quotation marks the other day?
Having no real desire to integrate further with social media, I am pleasantly reassured to see that t’internet it is indeed a market place filled with high-tech snake-oil salesman.
———————————————————————–
SNP unveils ‘absurd’ plan for Scottish Independence Day in March 2006SNP ministers were today accused of drawing up “absurd” plans for Scottish Independence Day in March 2016 despite popular support for separation slumping.
By Simon Johnson, Scottish Political Editor
9:19AM GMT 05 Feb 2013
They published a new paper which claims divorce proceedings with England could be completed in only 16 months and challenges David Cameron to open transition talks now.
The document says that Independence Day for Scotland would be in March 2016 if voters back separation in the autumn 2014 referendum.
It is thought the Scottish government are trying to start discussions on the process following independence to create the impression among voters this is a likely scenario, whereas a recent opinion poll showed only 23 per cent support.
However, Mr Cameron made clear last week he will not “pre-negotiate” independence and Michael Moore, the Scottish Secretary, has accused the SNP of trying to “fast forward through the difficult bits” of the constitutional debate.
Mr Moore said voters deserve to be informed about the substance of what separation would mean for them instead of the SNP’s “esoteric” concentration on talks.
____________________________________________________________
Unionism = “contemporary capitalism” = the continued drain of capital towards Asia, with the consequent acceptance of “capitalism with Asian characteristics” as the preferred model for growth = social progress measured by the GDP of increasingly closed and undemocratic societies dominated by laissez faire economics.
Vote Yes in 2014.
CameronB
“divorce proceedings with England”
There is no such thing as Wales nor N. Ireland then, only England?
Sounds about right for the Torygraph.
“whereas a recent opinion poll showed only 23 per cent support.”
Is it just me that takes a certain delight in the way this kind of rubbish is repeated to the point many people believe it?
If 77% are opposed to independence, why aren’t more of them buying the Scotsman?
Think I’ll start up a blog for no other reason than to have a link to WOS.
@ Cath
I will assume you were being ironic? If not, please clarify.
@ Cameron B It was, I believe (though I can’t find a link), Stephen Noon who said, re the 23%, something like ‘We’re happy to let them go on believing that’. If everyone believes BT has it in the bag, they will have severe trouble mobilising their vote.
To do well in Google you need to follow the Google guidelines. They won’t tell you how the algorithm works and it frequently changes. Just create a website with lots if good unique content, follow the Google guidelines and the hits and decent search ranking should follow. Mess with Google at your peril. If you put seo work out to third parties, question what they will be doing, there is no magic bullet and if they make wild promises it is likely that they will use dodgy techniques. A website and healthy search ranking is a valuable resource and needs to be handled with care.
Jeannie,
how do you do that exactly? Maybe if there is a simple and cheap way of creating a personal blog we could all, as a cohort, start blogging once a year and link to our three or four favourite Scots political sites. Coordinated behaviour may produce some very valuable short term google benefits prior to the 16 week official campaign, when most ‘undecided’ will inevitably turn to the internet for information.
Dear Rev Stu and Sneakyboy, I have no clue of this technology m’larcky but perhaps a short ‘how to’ article and campaign may encourage us all, as a readership, to lay some Golden eggs come the time of real decision for the general public.
I realise that was presumptuous. Sorry
Anyone can create a blog. Blogger is free and I imagine the other providers (e.g. wordpress) are too.
As far as I am aware you only start to get charged if there is excessive traffic and that means a lot.
The hardest thing is settling on a design and deciding what to write about (esoteric hobbies are good) … or you can just post links.
The other moral of this story: support local florists!
MajorBloodnok,
Thanks for that. Maybe this weekend I will sit down and try to set up one, with links and then write an article for the terminally interweb phobic about how it’s done. I will, however, obviously ask the Rev to publish it in order to avoid the inevitable huge traffic it would create on my new website along with the unavoidably crippling costs!
Wow. At the time of writing, a Google search for “Scottish news” has The Scotsman waaaaaay down at page 11. After just about every local paper in Scotland. Oh dear.
gman,
point taken.
Thanks!