IT WAS one of the most surreal weeks British journalism had seen, with the mighty Rupert Murdoch brought to account over the phone-hacking scandal at the Leveson Inquiry.

Without naming them, the chairman and CEO of News Corporation had begun turning on his former executives at the News of the World, claiming they had orchestrated a cover up.

How fitting, then, to be watching Enquirer as it portrays as the downfall of the nation's newspaper industry. From the self-destructive loosening of its morals to reducing circulations and advertising revenues, the production depicts a newspaper industry on its knees.

Just as Scotland begins toying with the idea of independence, its press is struggling for its survival, leaving a potential chasm in the nation's democratic life.

This vision worries John Tiffany, the director of Enquirer. As he explains in a broadsheet-style front page distributed at the end of the performance: "It will be the deepest irony of all if the Scottish people wake up to an independent country, and find they have to buy an English newspaper to read of their glorious new status."

His answer? A play rooted in the words of real-life journalists which he hopes will sound enough alarm bells to make the public realise what they risk losing. He commissioned three journalists to interview more than 40 others, basing the script on their transcripts. The writer and journalist Andrew O'Hagan, who walks among the audience at tonight's performance, co-edited the interviews by Deborah Orr, Paul Flynn and Ruth Wishart.

Among the journalists interviewed were Nick Davies, who helped break the phone-hacking scandal in the Guardian; Ros Wynne-Jones, an award-winning war reporter; and John McLellan, the former editor-in-chief at Scotsman Publications who picked up the newspaper of the year accolade at the Scottish Press Awards days after being relieved of his post by Johnston Press.

Aptly, Tiffany and his co-director Vicky Featherstone chose an office space in Glasgow's digital quarter as their stage, transforming it into an editorial hall with litter-strewn desks and a conference table at its centre.

Among a strong cast in the production by the National Theatre of Scotland (NTS) is Billy Boyd, whose character fights a battle far more serious than anything witnessed in Middle Earth.

The audience is taken by lift to the performance, walking past bundles of tabloid and quality newspapers used as door stops. In the floors beneath them are digital media businesses, while out of the windows they can see the BBC's headquarters and the river Clyde, infused with memories of Glasgow's industrial past. Nearby are the modest offices of the Daily Record and Sunday Mail, once housed in a large, towering 1970s building which dominated the view from the Kingston Bridge.

The backdrop echoes the message of the play – the press is floundering, shrinking, flailing as it tries to carve a path in the new digital landscape. A mix of edgy humour, poignancy and hard fact make this an enthralling play for a journalist who spent almost two decades employed by Scotland's newspaper industry – tabloid and quality. Sections of the dialogue could have come from my former colleagues' mouths – some of it probably did.

But would it work for the average theatre-goer, in Glasgow or London, where Enquirer is also due to play?

Boyd is convincing as a jaded idealist desperately trying to hold on to his principles in the face of commercially driven editorial decisions, while Maureen Beattie is impressive as Wynne-Jones, a former reporter for The Mirror and Daily Express.

At one point an emotional Wynne-Jones sits on a filing cabinet telling a young reporter of her experiences in East Timor. She had witnessed the massacre of a crowd, including children, and struggled to file her copy in difficult circumstances, only to be told the story would be shelved for 30 pages on the marriage of Edward and Sophie. While this is how journalism works, with the news agenda often decided on a whim, it also echoes newspapers' increasing obsession with celebrity, driven by the promise of circulation boosts.

In the background of the play hover the bright young things for whom a story is often 140 characters long. They are at home with digital technology and all the amazing tools it offers, but a little lost, the play suggests, when it comes to checking facts. During the production, the character of Roger Alton, formerly editor of The Observer, now executive editor of The Times, admits he has people who tweet for him using the social network tool Twitter: "I don't know one end of a tweet from another," the character says.

Played with gusto by Gabriel Quigley, the character of Deborah Orr, a journalist with the Guardian, scathingly states she has more followers on Twitter than The Independent has readers.

While Enquirer is an astute, engaging portrait of the contemporary newspaper industry, it perhaps under-emphasises the point that great stories are still being told – without chequebooks – and the digital tools threatening the demise of newspapers could also be their salvation. After all, online news sites are struggling as much, if not more, than newspapers. A recent study by the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism showed most online news sites survive for less than three years.

The public will always want news, but how it is told and how it will be financed, remain the big questions. Enquirer might not have the answers, but this innovative, entertaining production is worth a headline or two.

Enquirer is at the Hub, Pacific Quay, Glasgow, until May 12. Performances run Tuesday-Sunday. Kathleen Morgan is a senior lecturer in journalism at Cardonald College, Glasgow and a former editor of The Herald Magazine