Scotland's Pro-Independence Newspaper Has Incredibly Weird But Brilliant Photoshopped Front Pages

    "Some people really don't like it, others really do," the editor of The National told BuzzFeed News.

    The National is Scotland's only pro-independence daily newspaper, and its front pages are often a little bit unusual.

    Since it was established in November last year, the daily reveal of its front page – usually containing a bizarre photoshop of anti-independence figures like Labour's Jim Murphy – has become hotly anticipated on Twitter.

    As a long-term fan of The National's unique front-page creations, I rang up the newspaper's editor Richard Walker to find out exactly how they come to be.

    "What we're trying to do, and what The National is about, revolves around politics and it's boring to just have pictures of politicians on the front page all the time," Walker told BuzzFeed News.

    "We're trying to do something differently, and something with a bit of attitude – some people really don't like it, others really do."

    Some say The National's peculiar front pages – like this one of Tony Blair and Jim Murphy as characters from "Back to the Future" – diminish its journalism, but Walker thinks they're missing the point.

    "We get a great reaction on social media, but there is some negative reaction," said Walker, who also edits the pro-independence Sunday Herald newspaper. "Some people say it isn't journalism which I don't really understand – why is it not journalism to portray a story in a way which passes a bit of comment on it?

    "I don't see why it's different to any other form of journalism, or why choosing a bland picture of Jim Murphy somehow has more journalistic integrity than what we do."

    One of Walker's favourite front pages was this effort, by cartoonist Greg Moodie, on the day of George Osborne's most recent budget.

    "That page had all the hallmarks of Greg who is a bit surreal and crazy, but the point it made was a very good one," he said. "It made the point of Osborne being the evil figure, but we were also talking about the relationship between Clegg and Cameron, and I liked Gordon Brown as the dinosaur.

    "Remember, 'dinosaur' isn't our reference, it's [former Scottish Labour leader] Johann Lamont's – we aren't making these things up, we're just using the language they use."

    Walker also rates this front page – Murphy being crowned with a dunce's hat – very highly, as he thinks it shows the humour of the newspaper.

    "These front pages, remember, are supposed to be funny or light-hearted," he said. "Some are serious, but some of them are supposed to be funny which I think some people on Twitter sometimes forget – humour is one of the thing we use, and the Yes movement uses it as well.

    "I loved the one with Jim Murphy with a dunce hat on, it was such a funny image," he continued. "I don't think it was over-the-top or overly harsh – he was doing some crazy things as Scottish Labour leader."

    The front pages are usually dreamed up by Walker himself, who then creates a rough copy and passes it on to his resident photoshop wizards.

    "The photoshop work on [the Washed Up page] was great," he said. "We're lucky in that we have a few people here who can use Photoshop really well. We come up with a concept, do a kind of rough copy of it, and then pass it over to them who finesse it and turn it into something brilliant."

    Walker said there have occasionally been ideas dreamt up which are a bit too eccentric, or are wide of the mark.

    "We've turned down ideas if they're not funny when they're required to be funny, or have the wrong target," he said. "You have to be really careful about misinterpretation – if people can misinterpret it, if there's any suggestion someone might not understand it, we'll ditch it."

    On election day, The National's front page was a colour-by-numbers map which was sold with free yellow pens in Glasgow so pro-independence Scots could colour the nation an SNP yellow as the results came in.

    During the whole campaign, The National was strongly partisan towards the SNP, but Walker said that just leveled out the bias shown by "the English newspapers".

    "That 'Panic Button' page stands out for me," said Walker. "There was such a lot of nonsense being talked in the English press about an SNP landslide."

    "I can't say that front page was more over-the-top than any of the comments made in the English press, so we wanted to capture that whole hysteria in a way which was funny, powerful, and attention-grabbing."

    The paper is as strongly anti-Labour as it is anti-Conservative. This "Spot The Balls" front page made the point there is little difference between the two parties.

    "That was good, it was done well," said the National editor. "You couldn't see it straight away, you had to have a look at it so it drew you in, and it absolutely made the point that there was so little difference between Osborne and Balls in terms of their relationship with austerity – an important point made in an interesting way."

    Since Murphy's resignation as Scottish Labour leader, The National has lost one of its favourite targets for front-page photoshops, such as this "Murphy Out To Steal The Word Yes" effort.

    "The one with Murphy and the wrecking ball behind him turned out to be pretty prophetic," said Walker.

    However, the paper has found a new villain in Alistair Carmichael, who was caught misleading the electorate about a memo his office leaked during the election campaign.

    In its most recent edition, The National described FIFA's controversial chairman Sepp Blatter as "the Alistair Carmichael of world football".

    Along with attacking opponents, The National will continue to argue the case for independence and other SNP policies, as it did with this edition which had Frankie Boyle's head floating over the UK's nuclear submarines.

    "We've just added the Saturday edition, so it's six days a week now," said Walker.

    "It's always nice to get a reaction, online or otherwise," he said. "We get readers phoning up randomly to tell us how much they appreciate what we're doing and I've never heard of that before – it's amazing."

    But are there any front pages he thinks were too over-the-top, or took the paper's dedication to Photoshop too far?

    "Of course," he said. "But I won't say which ones."