In the last stop on our trip around the UK, Ireland and beyond, Linda Harrison heads as far north as you can go


Let’s start in the city of Inverness. Margaret Chrystall,


entertainments writer for local publisher Scottish Provincial Press (SSP), says the city has changed a lot in recent years. “In the ’90s, it began to be called the fastest-growing city


in western Europe. Inverness was granted city status in 2000 and has been – sometimes painfully – growing into that. Licensing laws, for example, took a while to reflect the late night culture of a city.” It has some special features for a city. “We can sometimes


see dolphins jumping in the Firth from our tearoom,” she says. SSP is a major media employer, producing 14


weekly newspapers. These include the Highland News, a weekly tabloid first published in 1883, and bi-weekly broadsheet The Inverness Courier, the first to report on the Loch Ness Monster in 1933. DC Thomson’s The Press & Journal has a Highland edition, while Inverness is BBC Scotland’s main office in the area, producing daily TV, radio and online news. The bi-lingual office produces output in English and Gaelic. It’s also BBC News’ newsgathering bureau for the Highlands & Islands, excluding Orkney and Shetland, which have their own newsrooms. STV has a small team in the city, producing


I 10 | theJournalist


t’s been a fantastic trip – but this will be the final feature in the Let’s Go To… series. Thank you to the hundreds of journalists and photographers who have helped over the past four years to put together a picture of


working in the media the length of the country from Aberdeen to Truro – and beyond. For our final fling we’re heading to the most northerly


outposts of the UK, the beautiful Scottish Highlands & Islands, a vast area that is home to the Orkney, Shetland and the Western Isles. Ask journalists who live here to sum it up and you get


“beautiful, vibrant and proud of its identity” in Inverness, “remote, peaceful, rubbish broadband” in the West Highlands, and simply “best place in Britain, probably” in Orkney.


broadcast and digital news and working closely with the news team in Aberdeen. It also supports STV’s news and current affairs offering, predominantly the STV News at Six. Commercial radio includes Bauer Media’s Moray Firth Radio. Outside Inverness, there are lots of local titles, and some islands have their own newspapers and radio stations. As well as BBC Radio Orkney, Orkney has weekly newspaper The Orcadian plus monthly magazine Living Orkney. Both are published and printed in Orkney by Orkney Media Group. There’s the Stornoway Gazette on the Isle of Lewis in the


Outer Hebrides, and The Shetland Times on the Shetland Islands, among others. The staff-owned West Highland Free Press, on the Isle of Skye, is famous for championing causes such as the Gaelic language and land reform. Paul Wood, managing director of the West Highland Publishing Company, says: “The west highlands of Scotland are a beautiful place to live and work, but the area, despite all its beauty, does face challenges. Lack of affordable housing, chronic underinvestment in infrastructure, an ageing


DE LUAN / ALAMY STOCK PHOTO


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