The Scotsman was conceived in 1816 and first launched on 25 January 1817 as a liberal weekly newspaper by lawyer
William Ritchie and
customs official
Charles Maclaren in response to the "unblushing subservience" of competing newspapers to the Edinburgh establishment. These two plus
John Ramsay McCulloch were co-founders of the venture. Circulation was 2,500 in 1837 and slowly rose to 3,500 in 1854. The paper was pledged to "impartiality, firmness and independence". The price was originally 6d plus 4d tax. After the abolition of newspaper
stamp tax in Scotland in 1855,
The Scotsman was relaunched as a daily newspaper priced at
1d and a circulation of 6,000 copies. The fledgling paper was originally based at 257 High Street on the
Royal Mile in Edinburgh. Until 1860 the Scotsman shared a building with the
Caledonian Mercury newspaper. In 1860,
The Scotsman obtained its own purpose built office on
Cockburn Street in
Edinburgh designed in the
Scots baronial style by the architects
Peddie & Kinnear. This backed onto their original offices on the Royal Mile. The building bears the initials "JR" for
John Ritchie, the founder of the company. On 19 December 1904, they moved to much larger new offices at the top of Cockburn Street, facing onto North Bridge, designed by
Dunn & Findlay (Findlay being the son of the then owner). This huge building had taken three years to build and also had connected printworks on Market Street (in 2024 the City Art Centre). The printworks connected below road level direct to
Waverley station in an efficient production line. In 1953 the newspaper was bought by Canadian millionaire
Roy Thomson who was in the process of building a large media group. The paper was bought in 1995 by
David and Frederick Barclay for £85 million. They moved the newspaper from its Edinburgh office on
North Bridge, which is now an
upmarket hotel, to modern offices in Holyrood Road designed by Edinburgh architects CDA, near the subsequent location of the
Scottish Parliament Building. The daily was awarded by the
Society for News Design (SND) the World's Best Designed Newspaper for 1994. In December 2005,
The Scotsman along with its sister titles owned by
The Scotsman Publications Ltd was acquired, in a £160million deal, by
Johnston Press, a company founded in Scotland and at the time one of the top three largest local newspaper publishers in the UK. Ian Stewart has been the editor since June 2012, after a reshuffle of senior management in April 2012 during which
John McLellan who was the paper's editor-in-chief was dismissed. Ian Stewart was previously editor of
Edinburgh Evening News and remains as the editor of
Scotland on Sunday. In 2012,
The Scotsman was named Newspaper of the Year at the Scottish Press Awards. In 2006 the Barclay Brothers sold Barclay House to Irish property magnate Lochlann Quinn, and in 2013 Scottish video games maker
Rockstar North, of Grand Theft Auto fame, signed the lease, causing Johnston Press group to move out in June 2014. Johnston Press have downsized to refurbished premises at Orchard Brae House in Queensferry Road, Edinburgh, a move which was quoted as saving the group £1million per annum in rent. The newspaper backed a 'No' vote in the
referendum on Scottish independence. In November 2018, Johnston Press filed for
administration. Shortly after filing for administration, the company was bought out by
JPIMedia, a company which was bought by former
Daily Mirror executive David Montgomery's new National World group in 2020. In July 2023 an extra 52 years were added to the archive alongside the previous archives (1951–2002). ==Editors==