Freddy Johnston
Press proprietor who led his family empire to new heights
FREDDY JOHNSTON, who has died aged 87, was the fourthgeneration head of a family business which grew from proprietorship of the Falkirk
Herald to become one of the UK’S leading regional newspaper groups, owning more than 200 titles. Founded in 1845, the
Falkirk Herald was acquired soon afterwards by Archibald Johnston, a long-established local printer. By the time Archibald’s great-grandson Freddy became chairman in 1973, the family owned two dozen Scottish titles.
Freddy Johnston’s expansion strategy took the business well beyond its native land: his first significant acquisitions, in 1978, were the Derbyshire
Times and a group of Yorkshire weeklies.
He went on to add many more English provincial papers, and in 1988 presided over the London stockmarket flotation of Johnston Press. The Halifax Evening
Courier joined the group in 1994, the newspaper interests of the Emap publishing conglomerate in 1996, and the Portsmouth & Sunderland group of titles in 1999.
Johnston himself was, however, “the very opposite of what people imagine makes a media titan”, according to one observer. “Modest, benevolent and polite to a fault”, he relied on his executives to drive the deal-making while he made time to talk to editors, journalists and print workers, to whom he was “Mr Freddy”. He often said that newspapers were in his blood – and were not about marketing or entertainment, but about the dissemination of news stories that mattered to their readers.
Frederick Patrick Mair Johnston was born in Edinburgh on September 15 1935, the eldest of three sons of Fred Johnston and his wife Kathleen, known as Kay. Fred led the newspaper company from 1936 to 1973, following his father, another Frederick – Archibald’s younger son – who had taken charge in 1882.
Freddy was educated at Morrison’s Academy at Crieff in Perthshire, where the family lived during the Second World War, and later at Lancing College in Sussex. For National Service he joined the Black Watch and went on to serve with the Royal Scots Fusiliers and on secondment to 4th Battalion The King’s African Rifles in Uganda, where he learnt fluent Swahili and encountered, as regimental sergeant major, the future dictator Idi Amin.
On leaving the Army Freddy worked briefly at the Falkirk Herald before going up to New College, Oxford, to read History. After graduation he worked for the Liverpool Echo and as assistant company secretary of Times Newspapers in London until he was summoned back to Falkirk in 1962, first as works manager and from 1969 as company secretary.
He was chairman from his father’s death until his own retirement in 2001, and remained on the board until 2010. Johnston Press continued to expand, notably into Ireland, and reached its zenith with the acquisition of The Scotsman and its sister titles for £160 million in 2006.
But its fortunes changed as circulations and advertising revenues fell after the financial crisis, and Johnston watched with sadness as it fell into administration with debts of £200 million and passed to new owners in 2018.
He was also chairman of Dunn & Wilson, a Falkirk-based specialist in book and paper conservation; a director of Scottish Mortgage & Trust and Lloyds TSB Scotland; among many involvements in industry bodies, he was also a past president of the Newspaper Society.
A proud Scot and a proud Briton, he chaired Scotland in Europe, which promoted Scottish involvement in the EU – and he privately opposed Scottish independence. He was a former chairman of the Edinburgh International Book Festival and a railway enthusiast.
Freddy Johnston was appointed CBE in 1993. He married Ann Jones in 1961; she survives him with their sons Michael and Robert.