Well, at least we have had confirmation that it is possible to keep a secret on Skye. Discussions about the transfer of Free Press ownership have been going on for more than a year without word leaking out.

On Tuesday, the legal niceties were completed and ownership passed to a trust which is controlled by the people who work in Broadford. The West Highland Free Press has thus chalked up another “first”. It is apparently Britain’s first employee-owned newspaper. We have practised what we have preached.

Since it was registered almost 39 years ago, the West Highland Publishing Company has had the same five, equal shareholders. Because of my writing involvement, I have maintained the closest association though it is a long time since I have taken much to do with how the business is run; doubtless to its great advantage.

Two of my original colleagues, Jim Innes and Jim Wilkie, have retained a diligent, continuous interest in the running of the company. A fourth founder, Dave Scott, dropped out of active involvement at an early stage. The fifth man, Donald MacIntyre, has always been the sleeping partner. He might have the most Highland name, but he has never actually been near the place!

Apart from Don, we were all at Dundee University together and that is where the idea of the West Highland Free Press evolved though none of us had the slightest idea of the extent to which it would influence our subsequent lives. And certainly, it did not occur to any of us that we might still be involved more than 40 years later.

When I left Dundee, I could have gone straight into journalism but I knew that if I did that — in other words, if I started earning a decent salary — I would never turn back and implement the Free Press idea. Yet I also knew that I needed a bit of training and experience.

By good fortune, the first postgraduate journalism course in Britain was about to begin, at University College, Cardiff, and I became one of its initial intake. So did Don. In the course of the year, he inherited some money and put £2,000 into the not-yet-born West Highland Free Press — quite a lot in 1971. In honour of this act of faith, Don became the fifth shareholder and director. After a distinguished journalistic career, he is currently the Independent’s man in the Middle East.

Though the personnel involved in the paper changed over the years, it was a conscious decision never to alter the original ownership structure. To all intents and purposes, we acted as trustees rather than shareholders or directors. Not a penny of profit was ever taken out of the business and that is part of the reason why it is still here to tell the tale.

For many years, the idea of profit was in any case strictly hypothetical. Survival was the name of the game and by sticking together at all points of crisis, we managed to keep the paper going, to maintain its journalistic reputation and eventually to steer it into much calmer waters where, today, it is an efficient, well-run business which will never make anyone a fortune but employs a dozen people, provides a service and takes in more than it earns.

Without the determination of the group who started it, the Free Press would not have survived its early years. But the longer it went on, the more of a stake we had in ensuring that it did not go under. We believed that what we had established was worth maintaining and were simply not prepared to contemplate its extinction; sometimes to a quite irrational extent. Because of ownership, we were in a position to enforce that stubborn commitment. There was never going to be a vote on it.

Things could have carried on as they are for a good while longer. But why should they? We are all older, with other interests and commitments and, apart from me, living well away from the scene of the action. Once the thought presented itself, it seemed pretty obvious that it was time to recognise all of this and put in place some succession strategy, consistent with the principles on which the paper had been founded and run.

I have never been very keen on the hereditary principle in any context. We could have hung around to find out if any of our kids were interested in becoming involved. But why would you wish that responsibility of obligation on them, even if by any chance they were prepared to accept it? If they want to start a newspaper, which seems most unlikely, they can go and start one of their own.

The obvious thing to have done would be to offer the paper on the open market and wait for one of the big groups to gobble us up. It was not an option we even contemplated but if we had done, one look at the Stornoway Gazette would have had us waking up in the middle of the night, raddled with guilt and cold sweat. So the obvious course of action, and the right course of action, is the one that has been pursued.

Not that I am pretending it is an act of charity or an easy option for the people who are taking over. Newspapers face enormously challenging times. The rise of the internet poses a threat to advertising and the availability of so much news and comment online also dilutes the habit of buying newspapers on a regular basis or, in the view of many younger people, the need to buy them at all.

Yet I am very confident about the future of the Free Press and indeed other local newspapers which provide a genuine service to their communities. In the Free Press’s core circulation area, we have a penetration rate of more than one copy per household. There is no other medium through which any advertiser can communicate so effectively within a target area. As long as that remains the case, why would they go elsewhere?

And why will it remain the case? Because the Free Press has always been built on quality of writing, diversity of opinion and a degree of intellectual challenge that is not found in many newspapers. It has also been true to its motto: An Tir, an Canan, 'sna Daoine – The Land, the Language and the People. Stick to that formula and the new owners will not go far wrong.

In the very first issue of the Free Press, the great journalist Tom Hopkinson — who ran that course at Cardiff which brought Don and I together — wrote: “An area that acquires a newspaper is acquiring a new status. It is gaining a collective voice.” I can only hope that the West Highlands and Islands have benefited from the existence of this collective voice over the past 39 years.

But don’t let me raise your hopes too far. The new owners do want me to keep writing for the time being at least. I will do so until we decide that that too has run its course. In the meantime, good luck to the new era and thanks for the one that is gone.