Today, one of the Polish Sun editions came out and it was absolutely fantastic. The content was tailored but it still looked like a Sun, so well done to all concerned – I’m sure it went down especially well in Scotland where there are more than 50,000 Poles.
I remember when the Scottish Government (back when it was just an Executive) invited me out with a group of Poles (I had spearheaded the media details of Lloyds TSB Scotland’s Polish initiatives) and even then, two years ago, I was wondering why more wasn’t being done to court this group from a media point of view.
And I know one of the Highland papers does a few pages of Polish every week, but this seems like a far greater venture. But there are two niggling questions that result from it:
1) Does a Polish-only language newspaper help with integration at all?
2) Why haven’t editions been produced at any point for other populations in Scotland – I’m thinking Asian particularly – who have been settled for longer and have a higher population base than the Poles.
(and no, I’m not talking about Gaelic. To me that’s a language that is vastly over-funded and over-represented in this day and age, but that’s an argument for another day)
What number 2 then leads on to is the other issue of representation in the media – PR, marketing and press. Last time I checked there were few Poles or other ethnic minorities in the Scottish media scene, which means not only that there are fresh influences being missed out on, but also huge audiences not being tapped into as prospective clients. If a Shaf Rasul, Charan Gill or Tony Hussein was to set up their own specialist PR agency or media agency, the benefits could be huge.