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July 6, 2007

Sunday Herald rips up book after Glasgow airport attack

By Press Gazette

The Sunday Herald had to drop the entire front end of its paper at the eleventh hour when news of the Glasgow Airport terrorist attack reached the office.

The paper had already dedicated five pages to news of the Lockerbie trial and was also covering the opening of Parliament in Edinburgh.

Editor Richard Walker said: “Everything was really in place then we had to rip up the front of the book and start again. We sent a reporter down to the airport straight away with some photographers and the number of pages just kept going up and up as the story went on until we were up to page 11.”

The paper brought out an extra edition, which was off stone at 3am, two hours later than usual.

Early estimates suggest sales rose by 10 per cent.

With the attack occurring on Saturday afternoon sister paper the Evening Times had already gone to press.

Deputy editor Tony Carlin said: “We provided as many names and faces and threw away a big chunk of the front end of the paper on Monday and did it again all live.

“Fortunately the story moved on quite a lot on Monday as well. We did pages 1 to 7 more or less live and changed the splash as we went on, with the police finding out about where the terrorists were 10 minutes before the attack in Houston, then more suspects being arrested in Paisley. We were lucky the way things fell for us.”

Radio Clyde, in Glasgow, has set out to help discourage unrest in the community since the suspected terrorist attack on Glasgow Airport.

Since the incident, it has been the topic of conversation for Clyde1’s Late Call. Production manager Duncan Leven, one of the first on the scene for Radio Clyde, said: “This is the avenue for people to say what they’re thinking – from both sides of the community, Asian and non-Asian families.

We work very closely with the Scottish Parliament and carry the ‘One Scotland, many cultures’ campaign.”

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