I remember how, in the days after the 2014 referendum, facebook pages appeared saying there were media startups coming that would do journalism for Scotland. Some of these even raised considerable amounts of crowdfunding money, including one called The Scottish Statesman.

I couldn't venture exactly how much money has been poured into pro indy media startups run by people with no experience of journalism, knowledge of media law, or an understanding of how resource instensive good journalism is, but many hundreds of thousands at least.

Most of these things were either stillborn or have discovered that after the first few months things get really hard (I say this as someone who founded, ran and then wound up a magazine in my mid 20s). The way around that of course is just to become a conspiracy click blog.

A common theme is the idea that these things can do 'investigative' journalism. Copy and pasting random internet articles together in a web of connection is not investigative journalism - this is why Craig Murray and Wings over Scotland can rattle off blogposts.

Meanwhile actual investigative platforms such as @FerretScot must make do with a fraction of the resources. Large sections of the Scottish press are on life support, and Dani Garavelli's much discussed report on the Salmond trial would unlikely have been funded by any Scots paper

Tortoise is a media startup with backers, a business plan, lawyers, and an understanding of what reporting looks like. That Scotland has been unable to do anything similar is the really sad part. Media for Scotland does not mean running a conspiracy blog.

So, basically, if people are truly concerned about the London media and its impact on Scotland, they would do well to invest in actual slow journalism startups and not a blog that Gary's made on Wordpress with a pixelated saltire in the banner.

This still exists - the site itself however is long gone