The Ulster-Scot - delivering a message

THE Ulster-Scots Agency is well on target on delivering the kind of paper which best reflects Ulster-Scots culture and language.

  The Ulster-Scot newspaper is seen by 88 per cent of the Ulster-Scots community as being either important or essential to the public understanding or awareness of Ulster-Scots.

                                                 More than 200 people attended a number of roadshows held by the Agency in Belfast, Banbridge, Ballymena, Cookstown, Enniskillen and Omagh and the opportunity was taken to survey representatives of Ulster-Scots groups about their opinions of the paper.

  An encouraging 90 per cent of the representatives from the Ulster-Scots groups who attended the roadshows received a copy of the newspaper.

  Some of the results make interesting reading - 79 per cent of respondents were happy with the overall content of The Ulster-Scot.

  When it came to asking which groups actually submitted news reports to the paper, more than half of the respondents reacted positively with the best response  coming from groups attending the Omagh workshop.

  The publication of the Ulster-Scot nine times per year would seem to please most of the people, although 52 per cent wished to see it published monthly.

  While 80 per cent  of respondents had no complaints about the paper's format, some suggested that the paper could be smaller.

  The question relating to the community paying some nominal charge for the newspaper to help with publication costs proved to get mixed reactions with 54 per cent approving a charge.

  "These results give us some grass-roots opinions as to how best the community wishes the Agency to develop the Ulster-Scots  newspaper," said Michael McCullough, the Agency's finance and administration manager.

  "As a result of financial considerations and feed-back on availability, we have taken the decision not to post out copies to private individuals in Northern Ireland.

  We will continue to look at ways we can make the paper more accessible to our target audience and a wider readership and investigate further the possibility and implications, of subscription charges and advertising in the future."