Long before the days of hyperlocal websites or community blogs, the West Highland Free Press was established as a community-based news outlet, determined to provide people in its immediate circulation area with all the services they could expect from a local newspaper.
The weekly paper was founded in 1972 and makes its priorities clear on its masthead, which carries the slogan ‘An Tir, an Canan ’sna Daoine — The Land, the Language, the People’. This was the rallying cry of the Highland Land League, which fought a crucial battle to win security of tenure for crofters in the late 19th century.
The paper is based on the Isle of Skye, where local resistance to the Highland clearances led to the formation of the land league. However, it is now read by thousands of people across the west Highlands of Scotland and beyond.
Land ownership is still a key concern for the paper. It actively promotes community ownership of the land and its assets, and campaigns for the right of people who live and work on the land to have a say in their future.
This commitment to localism reached a milestone in 2009, when the WHFP became the first employee-owned newspaper in the British Isles. This will ensure it remains rooted in the local community, rather than being taken over by some larger news organisation many hundreds of miles away.
The paper is known for campaigning on a range of local issues, such as the creation of renewable energy projects. It is also particularly concerned to champion the cause of the Gaelic language and believes it publishes more material in Gaelic than any other newspaper.
In the years since it was founded, it has seen the language steadily gain in status. ‘In the early 1970s the concept of any Gaelic at all appearing on road-signs was anathema to local authorities which were, at the time, dominated by landowners,’ states its website.
‘Now bilingual or even Gaelic-only signs are taken for granted. So, too, the formation of a dedicated Gaelic television channel — at one time unthinkable, but now an established and widely-accessible platform for the language.’
More information on the West Highland Free Press website.