Am Bratach closes as editor leaves
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The publishers of a popular north west Sutherland monthly magazine have given the departure of their editor as the reason for the “reluctant” decision to close it down.
Am Bratach’s May edition is to be its last, ending a near-28 year run of the publication, which is known for its chatty mix of news and features.
North West Sutherland Council for Community Action (NWSCCA) began publishing Am Bratach in November 1991.
NWSCCA trustee Donald MacLeod said the board had reluctantly decided to close it after being told by editor Anne Macdonald that she was leaving the post after two years.
He said: “We took into account the long-term prospects of the publication and did not consider it feasible to provide the stand-in cover and extended support required to keep the magazine going in the short-term and to recruit another editor.”
He added that the magazine was solvent and its financial position at the time of closure had been satisfactory.
In this months’s edition the board thanks its readers, subscribers, advertiser and contributors who had supported it over nearly three decades.
Mention is also made of the role played by Mr MacLeod and his wife Morag, who were involved in the administration of the paper from the beginning. Mr MacLeod took on the editor’s role in 1994.
“Together they did much to establish the standard of the magazine and to ensure its timely distribution each month,” reads the piece in the May edition.
One Am Bratach subscriber, journalist Kirsty Young publicly praised the range and quality of Am Bratach in her column in The Scotsman in March last year.
She wrote: "It's a full afternoon of engaged reading and, in its way, as absorbing as The New Yorker or Scottish Review of Books, other journals I take."
