The Times is a daily national
newspaper published in the
United Kingdom since 1785 when it was known as
The Daily Universal Register.
The Times and its sister paper
The Sunday Times are published by Times Newspapers Limited, a subsidiary of
News International. News International is entirely owned by the
News Corporation group, headed by
Rupert Murdoch. Though traditionally a moderately
centre-right newspaper and a supporter of the
Conservatives, it supported the
Labour Party in the 2001 and 2005
general elections. In 2005, according to
MORI, the voting intentions of its readership were 40% for the Conservative Party, 29% for the
Liberal Democrats, 26% for Labour.
is the original "Times" newspaper, lending its name to many other papers around the world, such as
The New York Times,
The Times of India,
The Straits Times,
The Times of Malta and
The Irish Times. In North America, particularly, it is sometimes referred to as the 'London Times' or 'The Times of London'.
The paper is the originator of the ubiquitous
Times Roman typeface, originally developed by
Stanley Morison of
The Times in collaboration with the
Monotype Corporation for its legibility in low-tech printing.
The newspaper was printed in
broadsheet format for 219 years, but switched to
compact size in 2004 partly in an attempt to appeal to younger readers and partly to appeal to commuters using public transport. An
American edition has been published since 6 June 2006.
Today
The newspaper's cover price in the United Kingdom is 90p on weekdays (30p for students at some university campus shops) and £1 on Saturday.
The Times's sister paper,
The Sunday Times, is a
broadsheet and priced at £2.00. Although
The Times and
The Sunday Times are both owned by News International, a subsidiary of Rupert Murdoch's Newscorp, they do not share editorial staff, were founded independently and have shared the same owner only since 1967. In November 2006
The Times began printing headlines in its new font,
Times Modern.
Circulation
The certified average
circulation figures for November 2005 show that
The Times sold 692,581 copies per day. This was the highest achieved under the last editor,
Robert Thomson, and ensured that the newspaper remained ahead of
The Daily Telegraph in terms of full rate sales, although
The Daily Telegraph remains the market leader for broadsheets, with a circulation of 905,955 copies.
Tabloid newspapers, such as
The Sun and
middle-market newspapers such as the
Daily Mail, at present outsell both papers with a circulation of around 3,274,855 and 2,353,807 respectively.
History
John Walter
was founded by
John Walter on 1 January 1785 as
The Daily Universal Register, with Walter in the role of editor. Walter changed the title after 940 editions on 1 January 1788 to
The Times. In 1803, John Walter handed ownership and editorship to his
son of the same name. John Walter Sr. had already spent sixteen months in
Newgate prison for
libel printed in
The Times, but his pioneering efforts to obtain Continental news, especially from
France, helped build the paper's reputation among policy makers and financiers.
The Times used contributions from significant figures in the fields of politics, science, literature, and the arts to build its reputation. For much of its early life, the profits of
The Times were very large and the competition minimal, so it could pay far better than its rivals for information or writers.
In 1809,
John Stoddart was appointed general editor, replaced in 1817 with
Thomas Barnes. Under Barnes and his successor in 1841,
John Thadeus Delane, the influence of
The Times rose to great heights, especially in politics and amongst the
City of London. Peter Fraser and Edward Sterling were two noted journalists, and gained for
The Times the pompous/satirical nickname 'The Thunderer' (from "We thundered out the other day an article on social and political reform.").
The Times was the first newspaper to send
war correspondents to cover particular conflicts.
W. H. Russell, the paper's correspondent with the army in the
Crimean War, was immensely influential with his dispatches back to England.
In other events of the nineteenth century,
The Times opposed the repeal of the
Corn Laws until the number of demonstrations convinced the editorial board otherwise, and only reluctantly supported aid to victims of the
Irish Potato Famine. It enthusiastically supported the
Great Reform Bill of 1832 which reduced corruption and increased the electorate from 400 000 people to 800 000 people (still a small minority of the population). During the
American Civil War,
The Times represented the view of the wealthy classes, favouring the secessionists, but it was not a supporter of slavery.
The third
John Walter (the founder's grandson) succeeded his father in 1847. The paper continued as more or less independent. From the 1850s, however,
The Times was beginning to suffer from the rise in competition from the
penny press, notably
The Daily Telegraph and
The Morning Post.
The Times faced financial extinction in 1890 under
Arthur Fraser Walter, but it was rescued by an energetic editor,
Charles Frederic Moberly Bell. During his tenure (1890-1911),
The Times became associated with selling the
Encyclopædia Britannica using aggressive American marketing methods introduced by
Horace Everett Hooper and his advertising executive, Henry Haxton. However, due to legal fights between the
Britannica's two owners, Hooper and
Walter Montgomery Jackson,
The Times severed its connection in 1908 and was bought by pioneering newspaper magnate,
Alfred Harmsworth, later Lord Northcliffe.
In editorials published on July 29 and 31, 1914
Wickham Steed, the
Timess Chief Editor argued that the British Empire should enter World War I.
On May 8, 1920, under the editorship of Wickham Steed, the Times
in a front-page editorial endorsed the anti-Semitic forgery The Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion as a genuine document, and called Jews the world’s greatest danger. The following year, when Philip Graves, the Constantinople (modern Istanbul, Turkey) correspondent of the Times
exposed The Protocols
as a forgery, the Times
retracted the editorial of the previous year.
In 1922, John Jacob Astor, a son of the 1st Viscount Astor, bought The Times
from the Northcliffe estate. The paper gained a measure of notoriety in the 1930s with its advocacy of German appeasement; then-editor Geoffrey Dawson was closely allied with those in the government who practised appeasement, most notably Neville Chamberlain.
Kim Philby, a Soviet double agent, served as a correspondent for the newspaper in Spain during the Spanish Civil War of the late 1930s. Philby was admired for his courage in obtaining high-quality reporting from the front lines of the bloody conflict. He later joined MI6 during World War II, was promoted into senior positions after the war ended, then eventually defected to the Soviet Union in 1963.
Between 1941-1946, the left-wing British historian E. H. Carr served as Assistant Editor. Carr was well-known for the strongly pro-Soviet tone of his editorials. In December 1944, when fighting broke out in Athens between the Greek Communist ELAS and the British Army, Carr in a Times
editorial sided with the Communists, leading Winston Churchill to condemn him and that leader in a speech to the House of Commons. As a result of Carr’s editorial, the Times
became popularly known during World War II as the threepenny Daily Worker
(the price of the Daily Worker
was one penny)
In 1967, members of the Astor family sold the paper to Canadian publishing magnate Roy Thomson, and on May 3, 1966 it started printing news on the front page for the first time. (Previously, the paper's front page featured small advertisements, usually of interest to the moneyed classes in British society.) The Thomson Corporation merged it with The Sunday Times to form Times Newspapers Limited.
An industrial dispute left the paper shut down for nearly a year (December 1, 1978–November 12, 1979).
The Thomson Corporation management were struggling to run a business under the grip of the print unions at the height of Union powers. Union demands were increasingly difficult to meet. Management were left with no choice but to save both titles by finding a buyer who was in a position to guarantee the survival of both titles, and also one who had the resources and was committed to funding the introduction of modern printing methods.
Several suitors appeared, including Robert Maxwell, Tiny Rowland and Lord Rothermere; however, only one buyer was in a position to fulfil the full Thomson remit. That buyer was the Australian media baron Rupert Murdoch.
Both papers had their survival guaranteed and it marked a significant own goal for the radical elements within the Trade Union movement.Rupert Murdoch
In 1981, The Times
and The Sunday Times
were purchased from Thomson by Rupert Murdoch's News International.
Murdoch soon began making his mark on the paper, replacing its editor, William Rees-Mogg, with Harold Evans in 1981. One of his most important changes was in the introduction of new technology and efficiency measures. In March–May 1982, following agreement with print unions, the hot-metal Linotype printing process used to print The Times
since the 19th century was phased out and replaced by computer input and photo-composition. This allowed the staff of the print rooms of The Times
and The Sunday Times
to be reduced by half. However, direct input of text by journalists ("single stroke" input) was still not achieved, and this was to remain an interim measure until the Wapping dispute of 1986, which saw The Times
move from its home at New Printing House Square in Gray's Inn Road (near Fleet Street) to new offices in Wapping.
In June 1990, The Times
ceased its policy of using courtesy titles ("Mr", "Mrs", or "Miss" prefixes for living persons) before full names on first reference, but it continues to use them before surnames on subsequent references. The more formal style is now confined to the "Court and Social" page, though "Ms" is now acceptable in that section, as well as before surnames in news sections.
In November 2003, News International began producing the newspaper in both broadsheet and tabloid sizes. On 13 September 2004, the weekday broadsheet was withdrawn from sale in Northern Ireland. Since 1 November 2004, the paper has been printed solely in tabloid format.
The Conservative Party announced plans to launch litigation against The Times
over an incident in which the newspaper claimed that Conservative election strategist Lynton Crosby had admitted that his party would not win the 2005 General Election. The Times
later published a clarification, and the litigation was dropped.
On 6 June 2005, The Times
redesigned its Letters page, dropping the practice of printing correspondents' full postal addresses. According to its leading article, "From Our Own Correspondents", this was in order to fit more letters onto the page.
In a 2007 meeting with the House of Lords Select Committee on Communications who were investigating media ownership and the news, Murdoch stated that the law and the independent board prevented him from exercising editorial control.
Controversy and image
Long considered the UK's newspaper of record, The Times
was generally seen as a serious publication with high standards of journalism. However, some, including employees of The Times
, feel it has gone downmarket since being acquired by Murdoch; they cite its coverage of celebrities as evidence, although this increased coverage of and emphasis on celebrity- and sports-related news is rarely given prominence on the front page. It is not without trenchant critics, however: Robert Fisk, seven times British International Journalist of the Year, resigned as foreign correspondent in 1988 over what he saw as political censorship of his article on the shooting down of Iran Air Flight 655 in July 1988.Readership profile and image
The British Business Survey 2005 named The Times
as the UK's leading daily newspaper for business people. This independent survey was sponsored by The Financial Times, The Guardian, The Daily Telegraph, The Economist, and The Times
.
The latest figures from the national readership survey show The Times
to have the highest number of ABC1 25–44 readers and the largest numbers of readers in London of any of the "quality" papers.Format and supplements
The main section of The Times
features news in the first half of the paper and editorial on its second page, with the Comment section midway through the main news, and world news following after this. The business pages begin on the centre spread, and are followed by The Register, containing obituaries, Court & Social section, and related material. The sport section is at the end of the main paper, with the Times
Crossword puzzle on the inside back cover.The Times Science Reviews
Between 1951 and 1966 "The Times" published a separately paid-for quarterly science review, The Times Science Review; remarkably in 1953, both "The Times" newspaper and its Science Review supplement failed to report on the discovery of the structure of DNA in Cambridge, which was reported on by the News Chronicle and the New York Times. Started in 1951, "The Times" Science Review was discontinued in 1966.
"The Times" started another new (but free) 'Eureka' monthly science magazine in October 2009.
times2
times2
is The Timess main supplement, featuring various lifestyle columns. Its current incarnation began on 5 September 2005, before which it was called
T2 and previously
Times 2. Regular features include an "Image of the Day" and a "Modern Morals" column, where people pose moral dilemmas to columnist
Joe Joseph. The back pages are devoted to puzzles and contain
Sudoku,
Killer Sudoku,
KenKen, Polygon (word search) puzzles and a
crossword that is simpler and more concise than the main
Times Crossword.
The supplement contains arts and lifestyle features and TV and radio listings and reviews.
The Game
"The Game" is included in the newspaper on a Monday, and details all the weekend's
association football activity (
Premier League and
Football League Championship,
League One and
League Two.) The Scottish edition of The Game also includes results and analysis from
Scottish Premier League games.
Saturday Times supplements
The Saturday edition of
The Times does not carry the
times2 supplement, instead coming with a variety of supplements. These supplements were relaunched in January 2009 as: Sport, Weekend (including travel and lifestyle features), Saturday Review (arts, books, and ideas), the Magazine, and Playlist (an entertainment listings guide). Saturday Review is the first regular Times section published in broadsheet format since the paper switched to a compact size in 2004.
The Times Magazine features columns touching on various subjects such as celebrities, fashion and beauty, food and drink, homes and gardens or simply writers' anecdotes. Notable contributors include
Gordon Ramsay, one of Britain's highest profile
chefs, and
Giles Coren, Food And Drink Writer of the Year in 2005.
Events
The Times, along with the
British Film Institute, sponsors the
London Film Festival (or more specifically, The Times
bfi London Film Festival). As of 2005, it is Europe's largest public event for
motion pictures.
The Times also sponsors the
Cheltenham Festival of Literature and the
Asia House Festival of Asian Literature at
Asia House, London
Ownership
Editorship
Current columnists and journalists
Other publications
( Times Books Group Ltd)
- The Times Comprehensive Atlas of the World, 2007 ISBN 978-0-00-780150-3
Bibliography
- Good Times, Bad Times by Harold Evans. Includes sections of black and white photographic plates, plus a few charts and diagrams in text pages.
In Fiction
- In the dystopian future world of George Orwell's "Nineteen Eighty Four", The Times had been transformed into the organ of the totalitarian ruling party, its editorials - of which several are quoted in the book - reflecting Big Brother's pronouncements.
- In the James Bond series, written by Ian Fleming, The title character, James Bond, reads The Times. As described by Fleming in From Russia With Love- "The Times was only paper that Bond ever read."
Notes and references
