Last week Celtic were quick off the mark to demand an apology from the Herald over the headline associated with an article about the club putting employees of the UK Government Furlough scheme.
No apology appeared on the Herald website but Celtic were quick to share the brief apology through their own website.
With publishers cost cutting at every opportunity the lack of experience in production is becoming increasingly obvious.
Folk that ‘are quite good at the internet’ are being given space to share their views on the pages of long established titles.
And of course Celtic continue to welcome these publications inside the stadium, provide them with media conferences to fill awkward spaces and during Lockdown will send around interviews with players or Neil Lennon to share with their readers.
The Herald barely carries any big hitters on its increasingly digital pages. Ian Archer and James Traynor previously provided insight and original thought, Ken Gallagher had been in the business for yonks while at the Evening Times Ronnie Cully knew the boundaries quite clearly having experienced the days in the eighties when sales were measured in their tens of thousands. Three editions of the paper were published through the day including the in-demand Times Final.
Nowadays almost anything goes, The Herald and the Glasgow (Evening) Times are virtually one and the same with their content increasingly drawn from the darkest parts of social media where conspiracies breed more conspiracies.
Today Herald and Times readers can share the paranoia of James Morgan, no bio is available about Morgan on the publication that shares his thoughts. After 11 years on Twitter he has around 1,700 followers.
According to his Twitter profile he is ‘EURO2020 host city correspondent for heraldscotland.com’. Seems that that job has been put on hold.
Pandering to the gullible he links SPFL Chairman Murdoch MacLennan with two major Celtic shareholders and selects one quote from a petition to link Neil Doncaster with Celtic.
That will be the same SPFL CEO who has put the Old Firm at the heart of every decision he has made in the last decade, to such an extent that he pretends that 2012 was just a bad month for cash flow.
Doncaster tried to parachute the new club into the SPL then the First Division of the Scottish Football League but that was rejected by clubs under pressure from their season ticket holders.
The former Norwich chief was an architect of the 2012 Five Way Agreement, burning the midnight oil before sending out the Mission Accomplished email to the SPL board. If a reply wasn’t received before 10am their agreement was assumed. That was democracy in action!
In The Herald/ Glasgow Times Morgan panders to the conspiracy theories of the unstable with:
Where has the SPFL chief executive been in the middle of this meltdown? A brief statement last Wednesday aside, there has been no word of communication from him.
Murdoch MacLennan, the SPFL chairman who has business links to Celtic owner Dermot Desmond and shareholder Denis O’Brien, has assumed responsibility for acting as the board’s mouthpiece.
The situation has, in turn, become tribal, loaded with claim and counter-claim; all too regularly the case in Scottish football and all too regularly to its detriment.
It is often said – sometimes too often – that the clubs themselves are the SPFL. With disparate interests to be heard, there are times of rampant discord and division as a result.
It is therefore incumbent on Doncaster, as highest-paid director, to step forward and assume the mantle he has been entrusted with as public face of the organisation. His position should exist specifically for moments such as this – when faced with competing self- interests strong and stable leadership is required.
On Saturday, a petition aimed at removing him from his post was launched by a Rangers fan. As of late yesterday afternoon it was closing in on a target of 25,000 signatures.
“This man is far too close to Celtic football club [sic]. There must surely be a conflict of interest going on here,” wrote one signee, somewhat predictably.
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He could have mentioned Ibrox MD Stewart Robertson sitting on the board of the SPFL. Also on board is lifelong Ibrox fan Les Gray, currently a director at Hamilton Accies. Gray has been an Ibrox season ticket holder in the past with his companies regularly enjoying hospitality in the days when trophies were won by ineligible players.