On Monday we will launch a new daily paper for Scotland.
The National will be the only daily paper on sale in Scotland to support the principle of independence for our country.
The decision to launch The National follows the Sunday Herald's decision in May to support a yes vote in the Scottish referendum. That decision seemed like a gamble at the time, when support for independence was still lagging significantly behind in the polls.
Today, the picture is very different. The support for the Sunday Herald from the wider yes movement has been little short of astonishing.
Our sales rose ... reaching an amazing peak the week AFTER the referendum vote, when we logged a 111 per cent year-on-year increase.
We knew then we couldn't keep sales at that level ... but they remain at around 40 per cent higher than they were at this time last year.
There's no doubt we owe that success to the support of the yes movement. But there have been repeated requests for more of the Sunday Herald's journalism ... The National is our response.
Sunday Herald publishers, the Herald & Times Group, have supported a five-day pilot. If sales of the new title reach expectations, publication will continue. We think The National is essential for the media diversity which a healthy democracy demands. The problem in Scotland is not that some newspapers support the union, it is that only one paper supported independence.
The print edition of The National costs 50p and will be available in newsagents. A digital edition is also available: a five-day subscription to it costs £1.50. To subscribe use this link
Due to demand, the Aye text line to subscribe to The National closed at 2pm today. Some people who subscribed using the text line were told their request had bounced back. Be assured everybody who had subscribed before 2pm will get their paper.Everybody subscribing after 2pm today must use the link above.
The newspaper's website, www.thenational.scot is currently under construction. A holding page gives information on the new title and gives readers the chance to leave feedback. The paper can also be found under the tag @ScotNational on Twitter.
Herald & Times Group managing director Tim Blott said: "It is the first time in many years that a new daily newspaper has been launched in Scotland. The National is an exciting opportunity to meet the needs of a very politically-engaged section of the Scottish population.
"We recognise that launching a newspaper in 2014 is to some extent counter-intuitive but we consistently argue for the power of great journalism and informed opinion.
"We will trial the new title in its proposed format for a week and if, as anticipated, it takes off, then it will become a new and dynamic fixture in Scottish publishing."
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
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