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Date: 10th June 2024
Jamie Beatson’s dad was a full back with St Johnstone back in the day, so there was never a question of where his loyalties would lie. “I’ve had a season ticket since before I was ten,” Jamie told me, “and when I got into my teens I made a website and wrote a bit for the Blue Heaven fanzine. I had always had an interest in writing and it was almost all Saints-related stuff. When I was at uni and the Saints’ Chat forum was on the go, but after that fell by the wayside we set up We are Perth in 2006. It still ticks along and has been the main forum for Saints’ fans for nearly 20 years now.
“Also at uni, I started an online fanzine which has come and gone over the years. It was fanzine writing that got me into journalism and after I graduated I began working in an agency in Stirling. I started the day after I finished uni went from being a student to having bylines in national papers within a few weeks: I learned more in six months than in few years in uni. It was a tremendous place to learn, under the tutelage of two seasoned reporters who showed me how to do the job. They guided my career and I became a hard-news journalist, specialising in court and crime reporting.
“Journalistic writing is not the same as other writing. I had to get used to writing for tabloids or broadsheets, learning how to use the correct tone of voice to write a newspaper story. Crucially, I learned shorthand, which is vital for court reporting. It’s one of my real life-skills, so much so that I find it hard to write longhand nowadays.
Local Press
“Strangely, given my interest in football, I never managed to get a job in sports journalism. However, I obviously take an interest in it and I think that when it comes to local sports reporting we’re very fortunate in Perth/Tayside area. There is still strong local press – the PA (Perthshire Advertiser, as well as smaller papers like the Strathearn Herald and Blairgowrie Advertiser. It’s the same in other parts of Scotland, with papers like the Kilmarnock Standard and Stirling Observer providing local coverage.
“Saints’ coverage is one of the reasons people bought the local paper in the past. The club would hold off on reporting signings to Friday so PA would get it in their weekend edition. As well as the local weeklies, Tayside and Fife has The Courier, a strong regional (selling more copies than the Herald and Scotsman) with local reporters feeding into it. In my view, their coverage of Saints and local clubs has got better over the years. Eric Nicolson (who is also a Saints’ fan) at Courier produces wide-ranging, excellent content for the Perth edition of the paper.
“One of the key problems for the traditional newspapers is how to succeed online. There is an abundance of content online, fanzines,, TikTok streams, podcasts and forums, plus there is far more in-house comms teams at clubs nowadays. These really didn’t exist 20-30 years and it was good to see St Johnstone step up with the appointment recently of two, experienced sports journalists, committed to the club locally. With their inside track, they can produce stuff you want to read that is interesting and informative, but to be fair, a good local sports reporter will also get different angles on the same story and thus keep local fans coming to their paper’s website. However, how the publisher makes money from this is another question…
National Press
“The national press, apart from The Scotsman, is dominated by the Old Firm. Their reporters come at stories with a local – call it west coast if you like – bias. For example, if there is a story about, say Chris Millar, he’s referred to as an ex-Celtic youth player, rather than acknowledging the main period of his career as a Scottish Cup winner with St Johnstone. Supporters of other clubs will be able to cite similar examples of their players.
“While this is understandable, because Rangers and Celtic have the biggest supports and therefore stories about them attract more readers/eyeballs, but there is a distinction between local and national press in that there is not the same dependence on clickbait headlines on The Courier, but the tabloids have word salad headlines, designed to get you to click the link to make sense of what the story is about. This is very much dictated by budget. When I started in papers, budgets were being cut, but it’s luxury then compared to what it is now. Print circulations have collapsed and, as I’ve said, the mainstream press struggle to compete online, which leads to their websites drenched in ads. very hard to make money. I think people don’t appreciate the paucity of staff at newspapers nowadays. It’s the way the world has moved on and it’s not going back. The legacy brands – whether UK titles like The Times, Telegraph and Guardian or Scottish press like the Herald, Record and Scotsman – still carry weight but their print audience is tiny and aged. And with social media, match reporting is invariably just an interview with a player and the manager.
“In the sports arena, nothing has come to replace the mainstream press other than BBC. There are media such as The Athletic, or Nutmeg, if you’re into a certain type of content, but the west coast bias stronger than ever. The whole media landscape has been hollowed out due to lack of resources.
“Broadcast has remained stable. Sportscene, Sky, BBC radio and STV dominate. Sportscene does a pretty decent job, but there has been a lot of noise about Sportsound recently. It seems to be chasing the Clyde Scoreboard demographic, and has become all about VAR, creating arguments, interrupting a conversation to take an interview with an Old Firm manager and extended interviews with whichever Old Firm team is playing the following day. You can write the script – Michael Stewart has an argument, Kenny McIntyre makes a crisis out of a drama, Pat Bonner tells us that a boy has scored, but he doesn’t know who, unless it’s a Celtic player, etc.
Sportsound almost does a disservice to Old Firm fans that the broadcasters think that Celtic and Rangers fans are only interested in their own club
“It’s got so bad that they sometimes don’t even talk about games during Open all Mics. Recently, they were talking about what their Gladiator names should be. There was a young reporter who tried to pitch in with a report and was basically told to shut up. In my view, it’s even more Old Firm centric and the quality and breadth of the reporting has gone down. Indeed, it almost does a disservice to Old Firm fans that the broadcasters think that Celtic and Rangers fans are only interested in their own club. I think there is a large demographic in both Old Firm supports that is interested in other games, even at a lower level. I have a wider appreciation of Scottish football as a whole, so I listen to the Terrace podcast because I want hear about the games, not hear lots of pundits who are just now up to it. That’s the direction Sportsound gone in the other direction. It doesn’t have to be that way. Lot of pundits are just not up to it.
“The new Sportsound feature where they have fans on after 5.00 pm is made to sound like fans have called in. That’s not what happens. I’ve been on it a few times and I’ve been contacted on Twitter during the week beforehand, or they phone me during the week. I’ve worked for BBC and STV and I know people there have a contact for every fan base, people they are happy to have on, so if they don’t get the first one then they move on to the next. But it’s not spontaneous, largely because they want to know they have people who won’t lose it on air.
“Sportsound has changed since Richard Gordon moved on and Kenny McIntyre has taken over as the anchor, but that was always going to be the case. I don’t think that it is all down to Kenny: much of the change is pushed through behind the scenes.
“Tom English is an antidote to all the frenetic comment and argument. He’s a decent man who very kindly sent me on matchday programmes from one of the Covid year cup finals. He brings a totally different dimension to the programme. Ex-pros have one point of view; he has a different thought process. I’d like to see it go more in his direction.
“One thing that many fans may not realis is that these sports journalists know far more than they can ever say. As a journalist, you find out more than you can ever publish, often for legal reasons or because you’ve been told something in confidence. There are a lot of back channels between players, managers, refs, and club official.
“Where is it all going? Will AI change sports journalism even more? Computers can write copy but they can’t do journalism: they can’t interview people and form relationships to get more information. The biggest problem for football journalism is financing the people to do it. What increasingly happens is that the bean counters rule the roost and they are constantly seeking savings. The money in football in lower journalism is pathetic nowadays. I do worry for the quality going forward. It comes down to whether anyone can make online pay, but we’ve been saying that for 20 years. Podcasts, fan website give a different perspective, but it’s not for everyone. It’s not a rosy picture, but there are still local centres of excellence. Enjoy them and support them while we can.”
Interview, Alastair Blair, Director of Operations, SFSA
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