Category Archives: news

Positively Scottish: solutions journalism that I'm proud to be part of

Earlier this week my friend and Herald ex-colleague Calum Macdonald launched Positively Scottish, a brand new site for Scotland focussing on positive news. Aside from the core concept of positive, actionable news which I wholeheartedly buy into, I also love that all of the contributing writers are being paid market rates for their content, giving aspiringContinue reading “Positively Scottish: solutions journalism that I'm proud to be part of”

My Indyref Personality Test for HeraldScotland

<![CDATA[Once a fortnight my dev team at Herald & Times do an Editorial Wednesday – a day devoted to bespoke development on our news sites. The hands-on design/dev work usually sits with members of my team, but due to staff holidays I was working solo this week. We didn’t have anything urgent on the editorialContinue reading “My Indyref Personality Test for HeraldScotland”

We're shortlisted (twice) for Scottish Press Innovation of the Year

<![CDATA[The finalists for the Scottish Press Awards were announced earlier today… and two of the projects I worked on have been shortlisted for Innovation of the Year. First up is Paywall 2.0, the new metered paywall system my team developed for HeraldScotland which saw subscription rates increase massively in 2013. Our work on this systemContinue reading “We're shortlisted (twice) for Scottish Press Innovation of the Year”

Guest blog post live on Nesta's Destination Local site

<![CDATA[ For close to a year I’ve been working with my colleagues at the Herald & Times Group and independent charity Nesta to bring OurTown to life. The history of the project is documented here and here. On Friday, Nesta kindly published a guest blog post I wrote for them outlining the successes, challenges andContinue reading “Guest blog post live on Nesta's Destination Local site”

My Nesta hyperlocal app featured in the Evening Times

<![CDATA[The mobile web/app I'm developing for Johnstone got some nice coverage in the Evening Times last week. Here's a grab from the PDF of the paper… And here’s the original copy… A SCHEME to bring communities together also aims to boost business, it was revealed today. The Herald & Times Group, the company behind theContinue reading “My Nesta hyperlocal app featured in the Evening Times”

Funding success for my Nesta Destination Local project

<![CDATA[A few years ago, while I was Web Producer at s1, I was asked to develop a ‘hyperlocal’ community web platform. The system I designed and developed with Duncan McDonald, s1community, went on to power over 100 s1-branded community sites, 80 Evening Times local sites and still employs full time journalists to curate content fromContinue reading “Funding success for my Nesta Destination Local project”

We won the regional TV news bid for Scotland!

Ok, first a quick bit of background: The Government are funding a pilot scheme for independent TV news production in Scotland, the North East of England and Wales. In Scotland, this would replace the regional news currently broadcast by STV. If you’re interested, The Guardian has a good history of the whole process. Only twoContinue reading “We won the regional TV news bid for Scotland!”