Scottish Government newspaper advertising funding: FOI release

Information requested

The figures, on how much taxpayers money, the Scottish Government has given to the following publications;

• The Scotsman.

• The Herald.

• The National.

• The Dundee Courier.

• The Press & Journal.

• The Inverness Courier.

and any other publications that have received Scottish Government funding.

Response

The Scottish Government purchases advertising space through Media Planning, Buying and Associated Services agencies, who place and buy advertising on the Scottish Government's behalf.

In response to the coronavirus pandemic this year, the Scottish Government has put in place a
Scotland-wide press partnership with local, regional, national and community newspapers. This
partnership forms a valuable support for the print industry whilst providing a cost effective platform for government to communicate necessary public information and social marketing messages.

Your information request does not specify a particular time period. We have taken that you would be most interested in current levels of expenditure for this year financial year (2020-21) and have provided information accordingly.

THE SCOTSMAN	£43,400.00
GLASGOW HERALD	£60,035.00
SUNDAY HERALD	£20,448.00
THE NATIONAL ON SUNDAY PRESS	£8,866.00
DUNDEE COURIER	£30,221.10
ABERDEEN PRESS & JOURNAL	£30,221.10

In addition to the activity above, the Scottish Government has also placed advertising through
Mediaforce which represents a lot of local and regional titles in Scotland, including some of the titles
you have included in your information request. For completeness we have included total spend
information from the last 5 months. This cannot be broken down by title, as one overall package cost is paid for the media purchased, this covers 92 titles. The total spend over the last 5 months across all Mediacom packaged titles is £1,036,607.51.

About FOI

The Scottish Government is committed to publishing all information released in response to Freedom of Information requests. View all FOI responses at http://www.gov.scot/foi-responses.