Happy birthday: Five years of The National in 12 front pages

1: THE NATIONAL’S FIRST FRONT PAGE

Richard: IT had only been decided to launch the newspaper about three weeks before we actually published our first issue. The Sunday Herald had come out for Yes in the independence referendum and we had a lot of support for that from the readers.

From a business level which, after all, is what Newsquest concentrates on, it was a successful move because circulation went up significantly and stayed up for quite a long while afterwards. There was a response from readers and a demand and even though the referendum had not gone the right way there was a very large minority in favour of independence who were clearly going to remain in favour of independence.

The atmosphere after the referendum was not what I expected. I expected a general air of gloom and despondency because after the first devolution referendum in 1979 it was awful and some people felt so badly they left the country, never to return.

In 2014 I had the expectation that it was going to be fairly depressing and it obviously was not a happy experience but pretty soon it became apparent that people were very much still supportive of independence and believed that the campaign had been successful in terms of raising support, which went from something like 27% to 45% over the course of the campaign.

There was a big minority that was not going to let go of that dream. It was obvious there was going to be an effect on the forthcoming general election and indeed the SNP got a record 56 seats out of a total of 59. It showed there was support still for independence and we wanted a daily newspaper as well as a Sunday paper to reflect that position.

It was originally just going to be for a test period of one week to allow us to see if there was enough support to keep it going. There was. We had to keep increasing the print run because demand was so high for the first issue. Of course, there is a difference between a historical first edition when people buy it to see what it is like but whether that was going to turn into regular sales was a big ask in a landscape where newspaper sales were falling. A large number of people questioned our sanity and predicted it would not succeed.

I announced it at the SNP rally a couple of days before the first edition and again there was some criticism of that. We said we were a campaign paper for independence, not an SNP paper, but some people said that by launching it at an SNP rally we were tying ourselves to their mast. I don’t agree as the hall was full of independence supporters – people we could reach – and the response both at the rally and to the first edition was fantastic.

Launching it was hairy. Normal launches for newspapers involve dummy runs and even for the Sunday Herald, which was quite rushed, we had two dummy runs but for the National we just had a collection of pages and we did not know how long it would take to produce it. It was still all up in the air when we were putting the paper together on the first day and it was nerve-wracking as our calculations could have been very wrong.

Callum Baird and Richard Walker at the National’s rally in Glasgow

Actually it was fine and looking back now I am still quite pleased with it. It wasn’t perfect but it was a good first start and although the circulation dropped in the next few days that is always what happens when you launch a new paper and it did not fall to a level where it put a question mark on its future.

When we got to the end of the first week it was obvious it was going to continue and we have not looked back since. The prophets of doom said we would not be here in a month and, at best, probably last only two months but here we are five years later.

The paper has grown in confidence and it absolutely does what it says on the tin in terms of support for independence.

We continued the brief of the Sunday Herald, which was that independence was not an aim in itself but the first step in creating the kind of country we wanted to live in and the editorial line had to reflect that.

We also wanted to look at the problems caused by the lack of independence in terms of social justice and we have carried many articles around that issue, covering some of the terrible things that have been inflicted on working class people by Westminster. We have covered their immigration policies and why they are detrimental to the people that live here and those that want to come here and the ridiculous immigration laws that prevent that happening and make it difficult for people that contribute to the country to stay here. We have carried a lot of campaigning articles around that and as a result many people have been able to stay.

I think the paper has been very successful and more than lived up to the promise of that first issue.

2: SMITH COMMISSION REPORT

Richard: THIS was the first big constitutional story after the independence referendum and it was Better Together’s chance to live up to some of their promises they had made, which it failed to do.

We commissioned Elaine Livingston, who had been picture editor of the Sunday Herald and is a brilliant photographer, to take a series of pictures of all the main players at Holyrood.

I look back now and think it was a very ambitious way to deal with the subject. I think it proved restricted resources need not stop you knocking it out of the park.

3: LET’S COLOUR SCOTLAND YELLOW

Richard: THIS was the run up to the election in 2015. Something important had happened between the referendum and the election ... the SNP had experienced a massive surge in membership.

I think even people who had voted No believed the SNP was the party to best represent the interests of the country.

At the General Election in 2015 we wanted people to vote SNP to make clear the passion for independence was not going away.We asked people to colour the map and by the end of the night it was overwhelmingly yellow.

4: ALAN KURDI

Richard: IT was a difficult choice to use that picture on the front. It had the potential to have an enormous impact on public opinion. Brexit had fostered an anti-immigration feeling and this was a stark reminder of how much people were risking by trying to get here and that lives were being lost.

It is such a heart-breaking picture and there was the ethical question of whether it took away his dignity. I designed a front page and left it on the screen in the office in full view of people. The opinion of everyone that saw it was that we should publish it to melt hardened hearts.

5: WELCOME TO SCOTLAND

Callum: I think this was the first National page that really went viral across the world. We wanted to portray the feeling that Scotland was different from the rest of the UK, which was very hostile to refugees – it was about the time that Nigel Farage was telling people to “go home”.

It was widely reported on because the refugee crisis was global and to have a paper that was an antidote to the rest of the British press was quite something.

It was actually pissing down when the refugees landed so our headline the next day read: “Sorry about the weather!”

6: BYE BYE BORIS

Callum: THIS was our only front page nominated for the UK press awards. We didn’t win but we got some recognition for it. It was right after Michael Gove had stabbed Boris in the back.

We had him dangling from a rope and we photoshopped Gove’s head so it was blurry in the background and showed a hand (which was actually mine) holding a pair of scissors and about to cut the rope.

That went viral, with people saying it should win Front Page of the Year. When you cover a UK story you can connect with people in the English twittersphere.

7:LA LA LAND

Callum: WE can only do these kind of front pages when everyone is talking about the thing we are parodying. We did one when Trainspotting 2 came out and then when everyone was talking about La La Land it seemed to be a natural fit to have Trump and May on the front page after her first visit to the White House as PM. It went viral and in the aftermath there was graffiti with the same image but we were definitely the first to do it.

8: THE FIRST SUNDAY NATIONAL FRONT PAGE

Richard: THE Sunday edition had to look like the daily paper and have the same spirit but but also have a character of its own. We did that by adding the Seven Days section which for me caught the spirit of the Sunday Herald and showed it was living on in the Sunday National.

The Sunday National has been going for just over a year now which is a short time in the life of a newspaper. I am really looking forward to seeing how it develops as it has been a joy to edit.

9: HEADLINE IN HERE

Callum: I THINK this is my favourite. It is certainly the one that has been seen by the most people as it had nearly 7000 retweets on our account alone. We worked out that it reached four or five million people.

It was a gift for us when we heard Theresa May was not going to let us into her press conference on her visit to Scotland.

This page helped make it an issue of press freedom. We still didn’t win the Scottish Front Page of the Year. The Daily Mail won with a picture of snow. But I’m not bitter. Not at all!

10: PEAK MADNESS

Richard: WE were looking for something to sum up the craziness of Brexit ... nothing was making sense any more. The well-known image of Madness and their crazy walk seemed to sum up the prevailing mood better than anything else.

It took a few weeks to get it working properly. One of our graphics people added the dancing Theresa May in front of the line up and that took it to another level and made it come alive. It wasn’t po-faced and it made the point.

11: OUR INDY RALLY

Richard: IT’S in the DNA of the National and Sunday National to do things a bit differently and the decision to hold a rally is a prime example of this.

We wanted to do something for the whole independence movement. We desperately wanted to have Nicola Sturgeon speaking as we felt it would underline the SNP’s connection to the yes movement.

It was a highlight in the life of The National ... but if we do another one we’ll make sure the sound system is loud enough.

12: TORIES AXE CANDIDATE

Andrew Learmonth (who wrote the story): THIS was probably one of the biggest responses to a splash we’ve ever had. The story was followed up by every other UK paper, as well as all the news channels.

His comment about David Irving left us stunned. Someone standing for a mainstream party flirting with holocaust denial is still pretty incredible. He claimed we’d taken things out of context and missed the nuance of his comment, but there’s no nuance in suggesting that the holocaust is something worth debating.