The future of Scotland's commercial media has become a bit clearer; it's local, micro-local and hyper-local.

It's also going to feature the rhetoric of being visionary, revolutionary, interactive and convergent, while featuring propositions which have connectivity and granularity.

And it'll turn to journalism students to unearth the stories and deploy the multi-media, cross-platform reporting skills of the future.

Big on jargon, that was the message to be taken from a public meeting, at which the two bidders for the STV News at Six slot - not to mention an £8m slug of licence fee money - made their pitches.

On one hand, STV itself, with ITN News and Bauer Media, which includes Radio Clyde, Forth, Northsound, Moray Firth and the like: on the other, the three publishing groups behind The Courier, Press & Journal, The Scotsman and The Herald, with the support of independent production company Tinopolis.

Innovative ideas

Just to to recap on this briefly: STV, as with ITV plc, has decided its current news operation is unsustainable on the advertising revenue being generated these days.

The UK government, with regulator Ofcom, has chosen Scotland to be one of three pilot areas, with Wales and north-east England, for a publicly-funded news operation, open to bidders with innovative ideas.

One complication is that southern Scotland is in the Border licence area, so it's with Tyne-Tees.

You can read more of the political background to all this in The Ledger dated 4 January.

What I didn't know then, but ken noo, is that; there will be £8m on offer, and £6m each for the Cardiff and Newcastle operations: existing staff will be transferred to the winning bidder under current contractual conditions, even if the incumbent is part of the winning bid: and any advertising revenue around the news programmes will go the broadcaster, not the news producer, at least during the pilot phase.

Hyper-local news

So, Monday was the day for the two shortlisted bidders to set out their plans.

Lacking much broadcasting credibility and without the advantages of incumbency, the newspapers' consortium has helped its case by unveiling as chairman Mark Wood, former chief executive of ITN.

With only six weeks until a panel of industry experts decides which consortium will supply news to STV, about 80 people were there to learn more about the distinctions between the two bidders.

Asked how many were genuine members of the public, without an axe to grind, only five hands went up.

Both consortia had done at least some market research showing - as it invariably does - that people say they want more local news.

That doesn't mean they'll use it, but that's what they tell people with clipboards.

The BBC was planning a more local online service, but after ferocious lobbying by newspaper publishers, the corporation was told to shelve that plan.

Social networking

So this was the opportunity for publishers to say how they would take advantage of the space thus created.

Fronted by a notably low-tech and low-key presentation by TV presenter Isla Traquair, the pitch was for hundreds of journalists already in place, working in 50 offices around the country, and adaptable for TV work.

The talk was of "lighting up Scotland", citizen journalists or "user generated content", community radio stations, journalism trainees, and being first to the news, on the ground, where it happens, without limiting news by the reach of a satellite truck.

Donald Martin, the man leaving the editor's office at The Herald to take over the Sunday Post, testily argued that newspapers already originate much of the material that broadcast journalists then pick up.

And there was a sighting of one of the rarest creatures in corporate Scotland: a member of the DC Thomson publishing dynasty.

Citizen reporters

STV had to say how it would be different, without criticising what it's already doing.

The talk from chief executive Rob Woodward was of driving down to local level.

In addition to the 6.15 news bulletins from four studios, he's talking about increasing that to six.

There are plans for up to 300 local websites. The technology is being put in place, and the STV-led consortium plans to roll out the content, hiring local online editors and with four journalism courses already signed up.

Add to that use of social networking and mobile apps, and you have a pitch for the younger demographic that all the established news media are struggling to reach.

The Herald's Tom Thomson wasn't to be outdone by that: "We intend to work with schools, to make children media literate."

For those who think TV news about the world and the UK should be reported from a Scottish perspective, Woodward's vision is to do so from STV. (That has been a political hot potato for the BBC. The most recent evidence from a Scottish government survey suggests support for the idea is weakening, a bit - down to 49% in favour and 40% satisfied with the way things are.)

Rivals collaborate

For the south of Scotland, there's the option of bringing it into the broadcasting pilot for the rest of Scotland.

Research by Ofcom, said its adviser Stewart Purvis, showed different attitudes in different parts of the south.

The Borders as far south as Hawick look north to Edinburgh, he suggested, while Dumfries people look across the border to a common interest with Carlisle and Cumbria. It's not clear how they're going to handle that one.

Two questions lingered as the meeting broke up.

Has anyone a plan to make these bids commercially self-standing after the pilot phase?

That's supposed to be part of the remit, but there's a lot of work needed on that by the deadline for final bids a month from now.

And in the words of Mark Wood, there is something historic happening between Scotland's newspapers.

Having long been rivals, they're proposing to work together on both commercial and editorial fronts - not just trying to create a new television programme, but with the online reporting which is now at the heart of their activities.

It's hard to avoid the logic that money pressures, and falling circulation, will continue to drive them ever closer together.

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This Westminster election campaign will almost certainly have a notable absentee: we won't have a dispute about the euro.

While Labour, the SNP and Liberal Democrats are, in principle, in favour of joining the single currency, they would be mighty brave to push the case for joining at the same time that it is creating such tensions, and may yet find some members parting company with it.

Greece raised the temperature last week, as the markets responded to fears that it can't handle its deficit. The cost of servicing its fast-growing debt was pushing up to 4 percentage points higher than that for the eurozone's German baseline. It doesn't take a downgrade of the national credit rating to have that effect: markets are pricing in these risks without being told to do so by Standard & Poors.

Portugal and Spain were drawn into those concerns. They protest they're different, but there's a fear of contagion, or domino effect, and they are seen as next most vulnerable. All three have problems in reaching a political consensus around what to do.

Pigs in muck

There's an EU chiefs' pow-wow in Brussels later this week to decide how to handle this pressure, which brings to mind a significant factor of this recession; the sense of crisis which saw an unprecedented global plunge around the turn of last year has ceased to have much sense of crisis for over a year. It's been quite a while since we haven't known how the week was going to pan out.

In Britain, the political debate ahead of the election revolves around the risk that the UK could join Portugal, Ireland, Greece and Spain (the so-called PIGS) on the critical list (PIGSUK?), with the national credit rating coming under pressure. How best and when to bring down the deficit is where Labour and Tory have so far clashed, and found themselves moving onto very similar turf.

But while a downgrade of Britain's credit rating would be expensive and politically humiliating, the markets also know that Britain can help get itself out of trouble by letting the pound slide. The PIGS don't have that luxury.

Budget pain

And being in uncharted waters - as the eurozone has spent most of its life in benign economic weather conditions - it's not yet clear how much the other eurozone members will do to help them through the difficulty and/or to punish them for their lack of budgetary discipline.

It seems the central bank and Germany will do what it takes. There's too much riding on getting the euro through its first big crisis. But at what price, for how long, and what impact will it have on the future of the euro if its members know they'll get bailed out in future?

You'll note Ireland may be the 'I' of the PIGS but for now at least, it is being treated differently from others in that unhappy sty. Ireland doesn't have Britain's flexibility with its currency. It has the same rigidity within the eurozone, but in Dublin, they've pulled back from the edge of the abyss by taking the kind of painful budgetary decisions being urged on Athens, Lisbon and Madrid.

Meanwhile, consider a quieter crisis besetting Latvia, a small European outlier. It's not in the eurozone, but it has pegged its currency to the euro, and it's paying a heavy price for doing so.

This Baltic state has lost around 25% of its economy since the recession began, and it's reckoned it will lose another 5%. As the Wall Street Journal recently noted, that's more than the 29% of output USA lost in the worst four years of the 1930s Depression.

Retail sales are down 30%, and austerity measures include a near halving of teachers' salaries and a 40% cut in hospital budgets.

The sense of crisis that's come back to Europe is being closely watched around the world, with fear of that contagion.

Women's skills

Longer term, with government budgets under severe pressure, what's the solution to this? One is to plan for changes to the shape of the economy. Labour market research just out from the European Commission underlines the shift towards high skill jobs, and away from low skill jobs.

It says that despite the sharp rise in unemployment recently, there could be seven million new jobs created by the end of the decade, along with 73 million vacancies created by the need to replace workers who retire or change careers. It also points out women are going to be more highly qualified, and more will have to be done to encourage them into using those skills in the workplace.

Plus, to continue this broad sweep of the continent, there's an interesting lesson from France in the past week. The country that invented the word 'entrepreneur', and then failed to follow through on it, is now seeing unusually strong growth in business start-ups.

Sterling slide

It's reported this is being driven by the diminished opportunities in the public sector. Or it could have to do with a new fast-track means of starting a company - doing it all online and avoiding red tape and tax until you start to turn a profit. While Britain as a whole does comparatively well at starting up companies, there may be lessons there for Scotland, where the entrepreneurial spark-plug remains damp.

Meantime, if those who lean towards the euro would do well to keep quiet about it during the election campaign, does that mean the Tories can crow about their opposition to membership of the euro?

Not really. They've been so burned by their own divisions over Europe that it carries too many risks for them to make a big deal out of it this time. And as an economic strategy, it doesn't do to trumpet Britain's freedom to let sterling slide, when the reality behind that is reduced spending power and the threat of inflation.

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An oath to do good and not to harm your rivals? It's a tall order for bankers, who have tended to prefer the more straight-forward, less ethically-challenging business of making mounds of moolah.

But the idea has been floated at Holyrood's 'future of Scottish finance' inquiry, being carried out by the economy, energy and tourism committee. It comes from two leading asset managers in Edinburgh; Angus Tulloch and David Gait. They're at First State Investments, and have waded into the debate about the future of Scotland's banking with some provocative ideas. No wonder they're being made in a personal capacity.

The idea of following medics down the Hippocratic-style oath follows on other ideas to remove the short-termism from investing. They suggest delaying voting rights for 12 months after buying shares, and delaying the right to receive a dividend by the same length of time.

Short-term tax

Bonuses should have a minimum three-year incentive, getting investors to think more as owners. End monthly investment performance data, and the regulatory requirement for quarterly results. Six monthly should be sufficient, they say.

How about capital gains taxes specifically levied on short-term investors. India has such a 10% tax on foreign investors realising profits within one year (though apparently the loophole is that one pretends to be a company in Mauritius).

They'd like to discourage short selling, and stock lending in order to achieve it. And they think a way should be found for minority shareholders to have more power in the boardroom - perhaps drawing some directors from a panel of approved independently-minded people.

Sober analysis

So what about the asset managers' oath? Here's the draft, and they're looking for suggestions for improvements:

"I swear to fulfil, to the best of my ability and judgement, this covenant:

"I will treat my clients at all time as I would wish to be treated.

"I will not allow the pursuit of personal gain to cloud my fiduciary role.

"I will strive to achieve, through hard work, sober analysis and sound judgement, the best risk-adjusted returns possible for my clients.

"I will not, however, pursue these returns to the extent that my actions will knowingly harm others.

"I will remember that a share in a business brings with it responsibilities as well as rights.

"I will not forget, in my search for returns, that the primary risk faced by my clients is losing their capital.

"I will not succumb to irrational exuberance in good times, nor to unjustified gloom in bad times.

"I will present a balanced viewpoint, highlighting risks as well as potential returns.

"I will recognise that my role within society is to allocate capital where it can be used most productively for the future benefit of all.

"I will not be ashamed to admit my mistakes and will strive to learn from them, as well as those of others.

"I will share my experiences, both good and bad, with my peers and work together with them to earn the respect of those outside the investment profession.

"I will play my part in promoting financial education as it benefits wider society.

"Finally, I will recall at all times the stricture that 'those who stand for nothing fall for anything'."

MSPs on the future of Scottish finance inquiry have come up against a significant constitutional hurdle. For obvious reasons, they'd like to hear from the people at the top of the regulatory agencies; the Treasury, the Financial Services Authority and the Bank of England.

But for constitutional reasons, none of those agencies want to be seen to be accountable to the Scottish Parliament. So the compromise seems to be a series of meetings, in London next Tuesday, at which members of the economy, energy and tourism committee will meet: Mervyn King, governor of the Bank of England; Lord Adair Turner, chairman of the FSA, and Lord Myners, the financial services minister at the Treasury.

But it will all be behind closed doors, without public hearings. That accountability is for the Treasury select committee at Westminster, whose members the MSPs are also to meet.

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