Shopping on line can be easy, simple and save you lots of money. It can also take a lot of your time, frustrate you, and result in unwanted purchases. Now the same can be said for regular high street shopping, but with the vast opportunity presented by the Internet it will pay you to spend a few minutes reading this and understanding how to better optimize your The Times shopping experience:
1. Compare - without doubt the biggest advantage that the The Times offers shoppers today is the ability to compare thousands of The Times at a time. This is a great thing, but not necessarily all the time! Too much can be daunting at times so take advantage of the great comparison sites and where possible let them do the hard work for you.
2. Research - if it has been said it will be on the internet. Ignorance is no longer a justifiable reason for buying the wrong thing. Take the time to research in detail everything that you could possible want to know about
3. Testimonials - don't know anybody that has bought a The Times? Wrong! If the The Times is good the internet will let you know. Use the Internet as a friend and get testimonials before you buy.
4. Questions - Got a question about The Times then search the Forums, FAQ's, Blogs etc. Don't be afraid to ask .....
5. Reputation - Never heard of the company selling The Times? Don't worry, no reason why you should know every company in the world, but you know someone that does! Use the internet to find out what people are saying about The Times and build up a picture of their reputation for sales, returns, customer service, delivery etc.
6. Returns - still worried that even after all of the above your The Times wont be what you want? Check out the returns policy. There is so much competition now that someone, somewhere is bound to offer the terms that you are comfortable with.
7. Feedback - happy with your The Times then let people know, after all you are depending on others people input in your buying decision, so why not give a little back.
8. Security - check for the yellow padlock on the The Times site before you buy, and the s after http:/ /i.e. https:// = a secure site
9. Contact - got a question about The Times, or want to leave a comment then check out the sites contact page. Reputable companies have them and respond.
10. Payment - ready to pay for your The Times, then use your credit card or PayPal! Be aware of companies that don't accept them, there may be genuine reasons but given the huge amount of choice you have when buying online there is no reason at all not to buy via credit card or PayPal.
For other uses, see Times.
{{Infobox Newspaper |name = The Times|image = |caption = Front page from a October 17, 2007 edition |type = Daily newspaper ] |price = Pound sterling0.70 (Monday-Friday)Pound sterling1.30 (Saturday) |foundation = 1785 |owners = News International |political = Centrism / Centre Right ], London ] |website = www.timesonline.co.uk |circulation = 692,581-->The Times is a national
newspaper published daily in the
United Kingdom (and the Kingdom of Great Britain before the United Kingdom existed) since 1788 when it was known as
The Daily Universal Register. For much of its history,
The Times has been regarded as Britain's
newspaper of record. It has played an influential role in politics and shaping public opinion about foreign events.
With its sister paper
The Sunday Times,
The Times is published by Times Newspapers Limited, a subsidiary of News International, itself wholly owned by the News Corporation group, headed by
Rupert Murdoch. Though traditionally a moderately
Political Compass newspaper and a supporter of the Conservative Party (UK), it supported the Labour party in the 2001 and 2005
general elections, FT.com / News in depth / UK Election - Election 2005: What the papers said after Murdoch allied himself with Tony Blair.David Rose, " Government refuses to reveal details of Murdoch meetings. In
Press Gazette,
December 15,
2005.
The Times is the original "Times" newspaper, lending its name to the other "Times" papers around the world. Outside the UK, it is sometimes referred to for convenience as "
The Times of London", Murdoch's Times of London to launch US edition, a May 26, 2006 Reuters article although it is a national, not a
London paper; or less correctly, "
The London Times"," Extracts from the London Times" to distinguish it from the many other papers using the "Times" name, such as
The New York Times,
The Times of India, and
The Irish Times. It is also 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 200 years, but switched to
Compact (newspaper) size in 2004, in an attempt to appeal to younger readers. In May 2006, it announced plans to launch a
United States edition; it began publishing on June 6 2006.
In November 2006
The Times began printing headlines in its new font, Times Modern.
The Times today
The newspaper's cover price in the United Kingdom is 70p on weekdays (a rise of 5p as of 3 September 2007), 25p for students at some university campus shops and £1.40 on Saturday (from 8 September
2007).
The Times' Sunday sister paper is
The Sunday Times, a
broadsheet. Its cover price is £2. 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 and were founded independently. The titles have only shared the same owner since 1967.
Circulation
The certified average
Newspaper circulation for November 2005 show that
The Times sold 692,581 copies per day. This was the highest achieved under the current editor,
Robert James 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, owing to over 300,000 discount subscribers each day.
Tabloid newspapers, such as
The Sun (newspaper), at present outsell both papers with a circulation of around 3,274,855.
History
The Times was founded by John Walter in 1785 as
The Daily Universal Register. Walter changed the title after 940 editions on
1 January, 1788 to
The Times. John Walter was also the first editor of the paper. He resigned in 1803, handing ownership and editorship to the second John Walter (second). The first John Walter 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 (journalist). 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 hacks 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 influentialPhilip Knightley,
The First Casualty: The War Correspondent as Hero, Propagandist, and Myth-maker from the Crimea to the Gulf War II with his dispatches back to England.
In other events of the 19th 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 Reform Act 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 (third) had succeeded his father in 1847. Though the Walters were becoming more conservative, 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 A. F. 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.
On May 8,
1920, under the editorship of Wickham Steed, the
Times in a front-page leader 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 leader of the previous year.
In 1922,
John Jacob Astor, 1st Baron Astor of Hever, a son of the William Waldorf Astor, 1st Viscount Astor, bought
The Times from the Alfred Harmsworth. The paper gained a measure of notoriety in the 1930s with its advocacy of German
appeasement; then-editor
George Geoffrey Dawson was closely allied with those in the government who practised appeasement, most notably Neville Chamberlain.
In 1967, members of the Astor family sold the paper to Canadian publishing magnate Roy Thomson, 1st Baron Thomson of Fleet, 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
News International#Times Newspapers.
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 was 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 inevitable migration to technology-based printing.
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.Alan Hamilton, "The Times bids farewell to old technology".
The Times, May 1, 1982, pg. 2, col. C.
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 compact 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 compact format.
The Conservative Party (UK) 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 September 2005, the cover price of
The Times was raised to 60pence, the same as
The Daily Telegraph and
The Guardian, and 5p less than
The Independent. It was the first time in twelve years that the cover price of
The Times has matched that of its rivals, a clear indication that News International was no longer prepared to fund the price war it had launched in September 1993 by cutting the price of
The Times from 45p to 30p.
In September 2007, the cover price of
The Times was again raised by 5p to 70p, matching rivals
The Daily Telegraph,
The Guardian and the
The Independent. Its Saturday edition also matches rivals' prices.
Image
Long considered the UK's newspaper of record,
The Times is 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,Robert Fisk, 2005.
The Great War for Civilisation: The Conquest of the Middle East. London: Fourth Estate, pp329-334. ISBN 1-84115-007-X 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 NRS social grade 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, 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 and the like. The sport section is at the end of the main paper, with the
Times Crossword puzzle on the inside back cover.
times 2
times2 is
The Times's 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 page is devoted to puzzles and contains sudoku puzzles and a crossword that is simpler and more concise than the main
Times Crossword.
The supplement contains arts and lifestyle features, a regular poetry column, and TV and radio listings and reviews. On Wednesdays,
times2 includes
Crème, the newspaper's supplement for "PAs, secretaries, executive assistants and anyone who works in administrative support." Crème Jobs, Times Online It is read by more secretaries than
The Guardian and
The Evening Standard.NRS, April 04 – March 05
Saturday Times supplements
The Saturday edition of
The Times does not carry the
times2 supplement, instead coming with a variety of supplements, on travel, money, health and wellbeing (called
Body&Soul), and the following:
Books
The only supplement with a quality newspaper devoted to book reviews, features and interviews. It also features a Puzzles section on the back pages, where the sudoku puzzles can be found on Saturdays, along with a large crossword and the Listener crossword puzzle. Edited by Erica Wagner .
The Times Magazine
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.
The Knowledge
The Knowledge is a culture supplement, featuring information and reviews of the coming week's best entertainment.
Its content is usually split up into the sections 'Arts & Entertainment' and 'TV & Radio'. 'Arts & Entertainment' is further subdivided into 'Starts', 'Screen' (which includes film, DVD, Internet and Games), 'Stages' (including Theatre, Dance, Opera and Comedy). 'Sounds' (Music, Clubs and Concerts) and 'Sights' (Museums, Galleries, Events and Kids). 'TV & Radio' consists of reviews and listings for current and upcoming Television and Radio shows.
The Knowledge is published in four different editions depending on region so that the information contained is more relevant to the reader. These are; Scotland and Ireland, North of England, West and Central, East and Southeast and London. It used to be published in smaller
A5 paper size format, but was relaunched in 2005 in an A4 paper size format in order to more closely resemble the
Saturday Times Magazine.
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.
Ownership
Editors
Current columnists and journalists
In popular culture
- During the time Ian Fleming was writing his James Bond books, Fleming had established that James Bond often is a reader of The Times.
- In George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four (written in the 1940s), the main character Winston Smith works in the Ministry of Truth. His job is to edit reportings in previous issues of The Times so that the Party's pronouncements always appear to have been accurate. While readers can assume that The Times in the book is Orwell's imagined future version of the actual newspaper The Times, Orwell never explicitly states that it is the same newspaper.
- A Punch Magazine cartoon once featured a butler ushering into his master's presence "Three reporters, m'lud, and a gentleman from The Times".
- On two occasions in 1882 a practical joker at the Times inserted a few words of obscenity into the text of the newspaper: in both cases, it was put on sale before the interpolation was noticed (see Harcourt interpolation).
- In the Monty Python sketch The Ministry of Silly Walks, the lead character played by John Cleese purchases a copy of The Times before going to the ministry.
- In his book Notes From a Small Island, Bill Bryson writes that when he was deputy editor of the business section at The Times, he was often unable to gain access to the day's stock exchange values, mainly because a colleague often refused to give them to him. As a result, and for more than a year, he used the market values from the early edition of The Financial Times.
- In the film Green Street the central character, played by Elijah Wood, and his father meet with the editor of "The Times". This leads to many of the other characters challenging his dedication to the organisation he has become a part of.
Notes and references
External links
- Official website, including a Style Guide
- Driving section including news, reviews and opinion from Jeremy Clarkson.
- Wapping: legacy of Rupert's revolution, January 15, 2006 - The Observer - Three views of the industrial dispute twenty years on.
- The Times editor Robert Thomson lecture online: From the editorial desk of The Times, RMIT School of Applied Communication Public Lecture series
For other uses, see Times.
{{Infobox Newspaper |name = The Times|image = |caption = Front page from a October 17, 2007 edition |type = Daily newspaper ] |price = Pound sterling0.70 (Monday-Friday)Pound sterling1.30 (Saturday) |foundation = 1785 |owners = News International |political = Centrism / Centre Right ], London ] |website = www.timesonline.co.uk |circulation = 692,581-->The Times is a national newspaper published daily in the
United Kingdom (and the Kingdom of Great Britain before the United Kingdom existed) since 1788 when it was known as
The Daily Universal Register. For much of its history,
The Times has been regarded as Britain's
newspaper of record. It has played an influential role in politics and shaping public opinion about foreign events.
With its sister paper
The Sunday Times,
The Times is published by Times Newspapers Limited, a subsidiary of News International, itself wholly owned by the
News Corporation group, headed by
Rupert Murdoch. Though traditionally a moderately
Political Compass newspaper and a supporter of the Conservative Party (UK), it supported the Labour party in the 2001 and 2005
general elections, FT.com / News in depth / UK Election - Election 2005: What the papers said after Murdoch allied himself with
Tony Blair.David Rose, " Government refuses to reveal details of Murdoch meetings. In
Press Gazette,
December 15, 2005.
The Times is the original "Times" newspaper, lending its name to the other "Times" papers around the world. Outside the UK, it is sometimes referred to for convenience as "
The Times of London", Murdoch's Times of London to launch US edition, a May 26, 2006 Reuters article although it is a national, not a London paper; or less correctly, "
The London Times"," Extracts from the London Times" to distinguish it from the many other papers using the "Times" name, such as
The New York Times,
The Times of India, and
The Irish Times. It is also 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 200 years, but switched to Compact (newspaper) size in 2004, in an attempt to appeal to younger readers. In May 2006, it announced plans to launch a
United States edition; it began publishing on June 6
2006.
In November 2006
The Times began printing headlines in its new font,
Times Modern.
The Times today
The newspaper's cover price in the United Kingdom is 70p on weekdays (a rise of 5p as of 3 September
2007), 25p for students at some university campus shops and £1.40 on Saturday (from 8 September
2007).
The Times' Sunday sister paper is
The Sunday Times, a broadsheet. Its cover price is £2. 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 and were founded independently. The titles have only shared the same owner since 1967.
Circulation
The certified average
Newspaper circulation for November 2005 show that
The Times sold 692,581 copies per day. This was the highest achieved under the current editor,
Robert James 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, owing to over 300,000 discount subscribers each day.
Tabloid newspapers, such as
The Sun (newspaper), at present outsell both papers with a circulation of around 3,274,855.
History
The Times was founded by
John Walter in 1785 as
The Daily Universal Register. Walter changed the title after 940 editions on
1 January,
1788 to
The Times. John Walter was also the first editor of the paper. He resigned in 1803, handing ownership and editorship to the second
John Walter (second). The first John Walter 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 (journalist). 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 hacks 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 influentialPhilip Knightley,
The First Casualty: The War Correspondent as Hero, Propagandist, and Myth-maker from the Crimea to the Gulf War II with his dispatches back to England.
In other events of the 19th 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 Reform Act 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 (third) had succeeded his father in 1847. Though the Walters were becoming more conservative, 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 A. F. 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.
On May 8,
1920, under the editorship of
Wickham Steed, the
Times in a front-page leader 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 leader of the previous year.
In 1922, John Jacob Astor, 1st Baron Astor of Hever, a son of the William Waldorf Astor, 1st Viscount Astor, bought
The Times from the
Alfred Harmsworth. The paper gained a measure of notoriety in the 1930s with its advocacy of German appeasement; then-editor
George Geoffrey Dawson was closely allied with those in the government who practised appeasement, most notably Neville Chamberlain.
In 1967, members of the Astor family sold the paper to Canadian publishing magnate Roy Thomson, 1st Baron Thomson of Fleet, 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
News International#Times Newspapers.
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 was 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 inevitable migration to technology-based printing.
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.Alan Hamilton, "The Times bids farewell to old technology".
The Times,
May 1,
1982, pg. 2, col. C.
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 compact 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 compact format.
The Conservative Party (UK) 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 September 2005, the cover price of
The Times was raised to 60
pence, the same as
The Daily Telegraph and
The Guardian, and 5p less than
The Independent. It was the first time in twelve years that the cover price of
The Times has matched that of its rivals, a clear indication that News International was no longer prepared to fund the price war it had launched in September 1993 by cutting the price of
The Times from 45p to 30p.
In September 2007, the cover price of
The Times was again raised by 5p to 70p, matching rivals
The Daily Telegraph,
The Guardian and the
The Independent. Its Saturday edition also matches rivals' prices.
Image
Long considered the UK's newspaper of record,
The Times is 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,Robert Fisk, 2005.
The Great War for Civilisation: The Conquest of the Middle East. London: Fourth Estate, pp329-334. ISBN 1-84115-007-X 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
NRS social grade 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, 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 and the like. The sport section is at the end of the main paper, with the
Times Crossword puzzle on the inside back cover.
times 2
times2 is
The Times's 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 page is devoted to puzzles and contains
sudoku puzzles and a
crossword that is simpler and more concise than the main
Times Crossword.
The supplement contains arts and lifestyle features, a regular poetry column, and TV and radio listings and reviews. On Wednesdays,
times2 includes
Crème, the newspaper's supplement for "PAs, secretaries, executive assistants and anyone who works in administrative support." Crème Jobs, Times Online It is read by more secretaries than
The Guardian and
The Evening Standard.NRS, April 04 – March 05
Saturday Times supplements
The Saturday edition of
The Times does not carry the
times2 supplement, instead coming with a variety of supplements, on travel, money, health and wellbeing (called
Body&Soul), and the following:
Books
The only supplement with a quality newspaper devoted to book reviews, features and interviews. It also features a Puzzles section on the back pages, where the sudoku puzzles can be found on Saturdays, along with a large crossword and the Listener crossword puzzle. Edited by Erica Wagner .
The Times Magazine
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.
The Knowledge
The Knowledge is a culture supplement, featuring information and reviews of the coming week's best entertainment.
Its content is usually split up into the sections 'Arts & Entertainment' and 'TV & Radio'. 'Arts & Entertainment' is further subdivided into 'Starts', 'Screen' (which includes film, DVD, Internet and Games), 'Stages' (including Theatre, Dance, Opera and Comedy). 'Sounds' (Music, Clubs and Concerts) and 'Sights' (Museums, Galleries, Events and Kids). 'TV & Radio' consists of reviews and listings for current and upcoming Television and Radio shows.
The Knowledge is published in four different editions depending on region so that the information contained is more relevant to the reader. These are; Scotland and Ireland, North of England, West and Central, East and Southeast and London. It used to be published in smaller A5 paper size format, but was relaunched in 2005 in an A4 paper size format in order to more closely resemble the
Saturday Times Magazine.
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.
Ownership
Editors
Current columnists and journalists
In popular culture
- During the time Ian Fleming was writing his James Bond books, Fleming had established that James Bond often is a reader of The Times.
- In George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four (written in the 1940s), the main character Winston Smith works in the Ministry of Truth. His job is to edit reportings in previous issues of The Times so that the Party's pronouncements always appear to have been accurate. While readers can assume that The Times in the book is Orwell's imagined future version of the actual newspaper The Times, Orwell never explicitly states that it is the same newspaper.
- A Punch Magazine cartoon once featured a butler ushering into his master's presence "Three reporters, m'lud, and a gentleman from The Times".
- On two occasions in 1882 a practical joker at the Times inserted a few words of obscenity into the text of the newspaper: in both cases, it was put on sale before the interpolation was noticed (see Harcourt interpolation).
- In his book Notes From a Small Island, Bill Bryson writes that when he was deputy editor of the business section at The Times, he was often unable to gain access to the day's stock exchange values, mainly because a colleague often refused to give them to him. As a result, and for more than a year, he used the market values from the early edition of The Financial Times.
- Great Uncle Bulgaria, chief of the Wimbledon, London Wombles is often seen reading The Times.
- In the film Green Street the central character, played by Elijah Wood, and his father meet with the editor of "The Times". This leads to many of the other characters challenging his dedication to the organisation he has become a part of.
Notes and references
External links
- Official website, including a Style Guide
- Driving section including news, reviews and opinion from Jeremy Clarkson.
- Wapping: legacy of Rupert's revolution, January 15, 2006 - The Observer - Three views of the industrial dispute twenty years on.
- The Times editor Robert Thomson lecture online: From the editorial desk of The Times, RMIT School of Applied Communication Public Lecture series
The Times Website
The Times UK newspaper online.
Latest Global Breaking News & Views | Times Online News
Find the latest World and UK news, breaking current events, video and photo news. Exclusive experts analysis and opinion on top headline stories from Times newspaper.
Welcome to times.co.uk
times.co.uk | Search for everything times related
World business, finance, and political news from the Financial Times ...
FT.com - international business news, analysis, market data and company information with the global authority of the Financial Times. Free, but registration required.
World business, finance and political news from the Financial Times ...
The latest European and international business, finance, economic and political news, comment and analysis from the Financial Times on FT.com ...
TES - Teaching jobs, resources & ideas from the Times Educational ...
This weekly education magazine offers the latest teaching jobs in secondary and primary education, as well as teaching resources and professional development for teachers.
The Times
Spartacus, USA History, British History, Second World War, First World War, Germany,
Business News, Market and Financial News | Times Online Business
Business news, market news, business comment and opinion from The Times and Sunday Times ... A 13% fall in the share price of Korean Exchange Bank since takeover talks began ...
The Times Literary Supplement (TLS) | Times Online
Literary culture and book reviews from The Times Literary Supplement. Detailed reviews from the world's finest book critics
The Rockall Times
Issue includes society, sex, arts, science, politics and logic.
