Former Inverness Courier owner tribute – Michael Grant, The Times’ Scottish football correspondent
Michael Grant, now The Times’ Scottish football correspondent, recalls the early days of working for Stuart Lindsay at the Inverness Courier – and how his generosity as an employer set a generation of young reporters on the right track.
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“When he owned the Inverness Courier it might have surprised Stuart to learn that the young reporters he took on could find him a towering, even intimidating figure. He just had that sort of natural authority.
“For a great man of words he was a master of silence. His venue of choice was the Coffee Pot on Church Street, just up from the old Courier building on Bank Lane, and being invited there could mean anything from a job offer after a spell of work experience, to a pay rise, to worldly advice on this or that way of doing things.
“But it also meant a session of Stuart’s pregnant pauses. There was a gift in that, because the young reporters would panic and fill those silences by babbling stupidly. They told Stuart everything. The quieter he was, the more they blabbed.
“Some might even confess that having a key to a town centre office meant they might occasionally use it to come in for a sleep at the end of a long night out…
“Stuart was a strong, great boss at The Courier. He didn’t just run a superb local newspaper with style and principle, he also took a chance by giving jobs to young and inexperienced staff and committing to the time and expense of sending them away to Napier in Edinburgh to be formally trained on four-month NCTJ courses.
“Only later did they realise how few bosses would be generous enough to do that when there was nothing to stop them immediately leaving for jobs elsewhere.
“All of them came back to the Courier from Edinburgh as fully-qualified journalists with a life-long gratitude and respect for Stuart.”
