Former Inverness Courier owner Stuart Lindsay, the distinguished journalist who transformed the Highland local newspaper scene and helped bring Renee and Andrew MacRae’s killer to justice
He was the newspaper man who loved the industry so much he bought a piece of it.
Stuart Lindsay revolutionised – and quite possibly saved – the Inverness Courier after acquisition from the legendary Eveline Barron in March 1988.
In ending a family dynasty dating back to 1885, he set in motion changes that would in time recalibrate local newspapers all across the Highlands.
READ CATHERINE MACLEOD’S FULL TRIBUTE HERE
But perhaps the greatest legacy of Stuart’s professional career lay in how he helped bring some closure to one of the most notorious and disturbing news stories in modern Highland history: the decades-old mystery of the Renee and Andrew MacRae murders, more of which later.
By banishing the Courier’s ‘hot-metal’ linotype printworks from deep in the bowels of Bank Lane, Stuart dragged the 1817-founded institution kicking and screaming into the 20th century, in preparation for the 21st.
Bakelite telephones and antique typewriters were boxed up to make way for the first Apple Macs.
The dusty, dilapidated ‘Courier office’ was brightly refurbished. Modern production systems, with electronic typesetting, composition and lithographic printing were introduced.
Gone before long were front pages filled with only adverts. Attractive, readable layout replaced monolith columns of black, impenetrable newsprint in the inside pages.
The dawning of front page news, with – gasp – photographs liberally used, made national headlines and TV news at the time.
Some readers grumbled about change and loss of tradition, but circulation shot up.
As past employee Paul Breen recalls: “Stuart’s vision and determination changed the face of local newspapers in the Highlands… It is hard to believe today that this would have caused controversy, but it did for a while.
“He persevered and it worked. A couple of years later, the new-look Courier was making record-breaking sales.”
READ PAUL BREEN’S FULL TRIBUTE TO STUART LINDSAY
In his last hot metal era editorial, Stuart wrote a farewell to “the incongruous mixture of old craft skills, art and precision with brute strength, drudgery and dirt”, last used on October 28, 1988.
The leader closed with: “Goodbye Gutenberg”, a reference to Johannes Gutenberg, the German printer who invented movable type.
A business in chaotic mess found a firmer financial footing. By 1991, the Courier had enough stability and credibility to be sold to Scottish Provincial Press, precursor to current publishers Highland News and Media.
Change had been painful, but just a few years after Rupert Murdoch and Wapping this was no megalomaniac tyrant trampling over lives and livelihoods.
Numerous past colleagues testify to Stuart’s instinctive sense of fairness and generosity as a boss.
Amid tumultuous change, he took with him what workers he could. Among those retrained, a typesetter in the caseroom, David Beck, became sports editor; an accounts clerk, Kathy Hagler, became features writer.
Wet-behind-the-ears trainees set off on an incredible learning curve through on-the-job experience and college courses generously funded by Stuart. With his and news editor Ron Lyon’s early guidance, most would forge successful reporting careers, some at national level.
This would undoubtedly have been an adrenaline-charged, stressful time for Stuart, but for his young protégés it was thrilling and life-changing to be at the heart of such a dramatic transition.
As Michael Grant, these days chief Scottish football correspondent with The Times, recalls: “Stuart was a strong, great boss. He didn’t just run a superb local newspaper with style and principle, he took a chance by giving jobs to young and inexperienced staff, committing time and expense sending them away on four-month NCTJ courses.
“Only later did he realise how few bosses would be generous enough to do that when there was nothing to stop them immediately leaving for jobs elsewhere.
READ MICHAEL GRANT’S FULL TRIBUTE HERE
“All of them came back to the Courier from Edinburgh as fully-qualified journalists with a lifelong gratitude and respect for Stuart.”
Seasoned reporters mistreated at other newspapers also found a haven within which to relaunch their careers, among them future editor, the late Jim Love, chief reporter Duncan Ross and sub-editor and future Highland News editor Paul Breen.
The late Alex Main, formerly the Scotsman’s Highland correspondent, served as Stuart’s last editor before selling up.
Stuart himself knew that earning a break in the industry was the vital first step.
Born in Hawick in 1944 to mum Peggy and dad John, a policeman, he grew up with his brother and two sisters in Hawick, Jedburgh and Kelso. He had a talent for rugby, later starring for Kelso, Aberdeenshire and Highland.
Leaving school in 1962, he worked as a labourer in the Duke of Roxburghe’s garden at Floors Castle.
Digging up stories, rather than shrubs, would be his calling.
He wrote to every newspaper in Scotland asking for a job as reporter, gaining a foothold selling adverts for the Kelso Chronicle.
In 1964, aged 20, Stuart became trainee reporter at The Shetland Times where he spent two memorable years learning his trade under editor and owner Basil Wishart and chief reporter Hugh Crooks.
He once said: “I couldn’t have got two better teachers.”
While it was the most northerly news outpost in the UK, 400 miles from home, The Shetland Times was known as a breeding ground for good, sometimes great, reporters.
Joining the Press and Journal and Evening Express in Aberdeen in 1966, Stuart moved with Aberdeen Journals to Inverness in 1969, working at the Hamilton Street and Planefield Road offices.
Within a still vibrant Inverness reporting scene, full of talent and eccentric characters in the regional offices of national newspapers such as the Express, Daily Record and Scotsman, he was building a formidable reputation.
Head-hunted by the Glasgow Herald in 1974, he worked alongside reporter Mike Allan. When Mike retired in 1982, Stuart became the sole Highland correspondent for six years, occupying a rented Herald office within Bank Lane, next door to Miss Barron.
Miss Barron recognised not only his ability, but qualities that made him a potential successor and guardian of the Courier’s future.
Stuart’s quiet-spoken, serious and sometimes reserved demeanour could occasionally be misinterpreted, but those who knew him recall his warmth, decency and, above all, his wonderfully dry wit.
He delighted in stories of all kinds, not least the unprintable tales of journalistic mishap and misdemeanour. When the occasion called, these would be retold with relish.
As a reporter, he was a master of his craft - knowledgeable, authoritative, a stickler for accuracy and as economical in his writing style as he was with the spoken word.
As his friend and former reporting colleague Catherine MacLeod of the BBC recounts: “Whenever I think about Stuart Lindsay, I think about his stories, his delight at finding them, and his almost boyish enthusiasm when imparting every nuance and detail he had uncovered on his travels.
“There was no point in being in a hurry with Stuart. He would tell his tale in his own time. His knowledge of subjects he was interested in was encyclopaedic.
“Stuart marched to the beat of his own drum … an exemplary journalist.”
READ CATHERINE MACLEOD’S FULL TRIBUTE HERE
Many colleagues recall his refusal to lightly accept the obvious or official storyline, a trait that served him well in gathering many great exclusives.
He was the journalist who first discovered that Willie McRae, the Scottish lawyer, SNP politician and anti-nuclear campaigner, had died not as the result of a car crash but from a gunshot to the head.
He broke the story that millionaires and celebrities were using the Highlands as a massive tax dodge by planting trees in the Highlands.
When Orkney fishermen were under siege from environmentalists over the culling of seals, Stuart was one of the few who championed the plight of those who could lose their livelihoods.
When a boat filled with reporters was repelled by the fishermen, he donned a wetsuit to swim across and secure an exclusive.
It was while he was at the Glasgow Herald in 1976 that the disappearance of Renee and little Andrew MacRae occurred.
A measure of the man came in the fact he never fell into the trap of calling it ‘the Renee MacRae murder’, as others did, always remembering a little boy had also lost his life.
Agonisingly for family and friends, Renee and Andrew’s bodies have never been found.
In 1976, William MacDowell, Renee’s secret lover, was a person of interest in police enquiries but not yet an official suspect. Stuart was one of a group of reporters who secured an interview.
In one fateful moment, MacDowell disclosed that he and Renee had a secret code whereby she would let the phone ring twice then ring off. If MacDowell was free to speak in his wife’s absence, he would call her back.
MacDowell told Stuart that Renee had used this coded call since her disappearance, saying he was convinced she and Andrew were alive and well.
Stuart asked if he had passed this detail to the police and MacDowell replied: ‘It must have slipped my mind.’
Some 46 years later, those words would return to haunt MacDowell in his trial as Stuart, called late to the witness box, delivered evidence that dismantled a significant facet of the accused’s defence.
David Love, who worked with Stuart at the Press and Journal and dedicated many years in pursuit of justice for Renee and Andrew, is convinced he was “a crucial witness… and his evidence helped convict the callous killer.”
The 81-year-old was found guilty of both murders and sentenced to 30 years. He would die in prison a few months later.
Before retirement, Stuart worked in colour reproduction in the printing industry and in magazine publishing.
READ DAVID LOVE’S AND OTHER TRIBUTES HERE
In retirement, he remained an active member of Nairn Golf Club, writing the club’s centenary book in 1987 and updating it for their 125th anniversary in 2012.
Stuart, who died aged 80 on January 16, will be laid to rest in Inverness tomorrow. He is survived by wife Janet, children Reuben, Matthew and Christopher and grandchildren Ellen, Jane, Adam, Sam and Callan.
In retirement, he doted on his grandchildren, delighting in spending as much as much time with them as he could.
If it had been put to Stuart that his part in the MacDowell conviction was his greatest lifetime legacy, he would have almost certainly disagreed.
That honour fell to his family.
