The Sunday Times is a national Sunday broadsheet newspaper in the United Kingdom. The Sunday Times is published by Times Newspapers Ltd, a subsidiary of News International, which is in turn owned by News Corporation. Times Newspapers also owns The Times, but the two papers were founded independently and came under common ownership only in 1966. Rupert Murdoch's News International acquired the papers in 1981. Each year The Sunday Times publishes a Rich List—which boosts sales.

While its sister paper, The Times, holds a substantially smaller circulation than the largest-circulation British quality daily, The Daily Telegraph, The Sunday Times occupies a dominant position in the quality Sunday market; its circulation of just under 1m equals that of the The Sunday Telegraph, The Observer and The Independent on Sunday combined.^[1] It maintains the larger broadsheet format and has said that it will continue to do so.

Its domestic newsstand price increase to £2 from £1.80 in September 2006, the second price rise in two years, has started to cause a slight month-on-month and year-on-year decline in its readership. This has been following a general decline in readership of all Sunday newspapers. To combat this rivals such as The Independent on Sunday relaunched in June 2007 with a more concise approach to its content and sections, while The Observer has relaunched in a Berliner format with colour throughout all sections.

In July 2011, The Sunday Times was implicated in the phone hacking scandal involving the News of the World, another Murdoch newspaper. Former British prime minister Gordon Brown accused the Sunday Times of employing "known criminals" to impersonate him and obtain his private financial records.^[2][3] Brown's bank reported that an investigator employed by the Sunday Times repeatedly impersonated Brown to gain access to his bank account records.^[4]

History[link]

The paper was launched as The New Observer in 1821; Observer newspaper had been founded in 1791 although the two newspapers were unrelated. It was renamed The Independent Observer and then in 1822 The Sunday Times, again without any relationship between itself and The Times.^[5]

Rachel Beer acquired the paper in 1893, and Alfred Harmsworth acquired it in 1908. By 1959 it was part of the Kemsley group of newspapers, which was acquired in that year by Lord Thomson. In 1966 Thomson also acquired The Times and formed Times Newspapers Ltd to publish the two papers.

Rupert Murdoch's News International acquired the Times titles in 1981, but the Conservative government never referred the purchase to the Monopolies and Mergers Commission, mainly because the previous owners, The Thomson Corporation, had threatened to close the papers down if they were not taken over by someone else within an allotted time, and it was feared that any legal delay to Murdoch's takeover might lead to the two titles' demise. This was despite the fact that the takeover gave Murdoch the control of four national newspapers; The Times, The Sunday Times, The Sun and the News of the World.

Almost a decade later News Corp would own the Fox Network. News International is the controlling shareholder of BSkyB and James Murdoch is CEO.

Control by News Corporation ended the editorial reign of Harold Evans, bringing to a close a period in the paper's history when it was a leading campaigning, investigative and liberal-leaning newspaper. Under Andrew Neil's editorship in the 1980s and early 1990s, The Sunday Times took a strongly Thatcherite and Wienerite slant, and became particularly strongly associated with the view that anti-commercialism among those who traditionally voted for the Conservative Party had actually worked alongside traditional socialism in undermining Britain's economic competitiveness. In this area it strongly opposed the traditional conservatism expounded by Peregrine Worsthorne at the rival Sunday Telegraph.

On 26 March 2010, The Sunday Times announced that it would start charging for content in its website from June 2010. Users would have to pay £1 for a day's access, and £2 for a week subscription. Sunday Times would be relaunching its website by May 2010. These new website sites would be available to registered customers for free for a trial period.

The daily payment would give readers access to The Times and Sunday Times websites, but the weekly subscription would include special digital services, such as an e-paper and new applications. Existing subscribers to the print version would have access to the online version.^[6]

Major stories[link]

It published the faked Hitler Diaries (1983), believing them to be genuine. Other notable stories include:

• The thalidomide scandal in the 1960s.
• The paper sponsored Francis Chichester's single-handed circumnavigation of the world under sail in 1966–1967, and the Sunday Times Golden Globe Race in 1968–1969, both of which were sensational events in Britain.
• Israeli Nuclear Weapons—using information from Mordechai Vanunu, The Sunday Times in 1986 published information that said that Israel had manufactured more than 100 nuclear warheads.
• Uncaring Thatcher—The Sunday Times ran a story claiming that Queen Elizabeth II was upset with the style of Margaret Thatcher's leadership. This was notable as the monarch generally maintains a strictly impartial role politically
• The "cash-for-questions" investigation under John Major's government.
• On 12 July 1987 The Sunday Times began serialisation of the book Spycatcher, the memoirs of an MI5 agent, which had been banned in Britain. The paper successfully challenged subsequent legal action by the British government, winning its case at the European Court of Human Rights in 1991.^[7]
• Over two years in the early 1990s, the Sunday Times published a series of articles rejecting the role of HIV in causing AIDS, calling the African AIDS epidemic a myth. In response, the scientific journal Nature described the paper's coverage of HIV/AIDS as "seriously mistaken, and probably disastrous."^[8] Nature argued that the newspaper had "so consistently misrepresented the role of HIV in the causation of AIDS that Nature plans to monitor its future treatment of the issue."^[9]
• In January 2010, the Sunday Times published an article alleging that a figure in the IPCC Fourth Assessment Report was based on an "unsubstantiated claim". The story gained worldwide attention. However, a scientist quoted in the very same article later stated that the newspaper story was wrong and that quotes of him had been used in a misleading way.^[10] Following an official complaint to the Press Complaints Commission,^[10] the Sunday Times retracted the story and apologized.^[11][12]

The Sunday Times publishes The Sunday Times Rich List, an annual survey of the wealthiest people in Britain and Ireland, equivalent to the Forbes 400 list in the USA, and a series of league tables with reviews of private British companies, in particular the Sunday Times Fast Track 100. The paper also publishes an annual league table of British universities and a similar one for Irish universities. It also publishes the Sunday Times Bestseller List of best-selling books in Britain, and a list of the "100 Best Companies to Work For", focusing on UK companies.

Irish edition[link]

During the 1990s the paper developed a separate version for the Republic of Ireland. A Dublin office was opened in 1993, run by Alan Ruddock and John Burns. Originally the Irish edition extended to little more than a small number of news stories, some columnists such as Eoghan Harris, and the inclusion of Irish cinema listings and schedules for RTÉ One and RTÉ Two in the Culture section of the paper; but by 2005, a separate printing plant, journalistic offices, and many Irish journalists, including Liam Fay, Richard Oakley, Mark Tighe and Colin Coyle who write solely for the Irish edition have led to most of the main news section as well as all other sections being editionalised for Ireland.

The Irish edition of The Sunday Times is not linked to The Irish Times newspaper, which is published Monday to Saturday in Dublin.

The Irish issue sells about 140,000 copies per week across the paper's entire circulation area, which includes a separate edition for Northern Ireland. The current Irish editor is Frank Fitzgibbon, a founder of the Sunday Business Post.

Scottish edition[link]

The paper also runs a Scottish edition. The majority of the articles are the same as the English edition, though the paper does run several stories from Scotland and its headline front page story is normally a Scottish story. The paper also gives Scottish TV schedules and cinema listings as well as having Scottish writers for its opinion section.

Editors[link]

1821: Henry White

1822: Daniel Whittle Harvey

1824: Clarkson

1828: Thomas Gaspey

1835: Unknown

1854: William Carpenter

1855: Joseph Moses Levy

1856: E. T. Smith

1858: Edward Seale

1867: Edmund Scale

1874: Joseph Hatton

1881: Neville Bruce

1887: Phil Robinson

1890: Arthur William à Beckett

1893: Rachel Beer

1901: Leonard Rees

1932: William W. Hadley

1950: Harry Hodson

1961: Denis Hamilton

1967: Harold Evans

1981: Frank Giles

1983: Andrew Neil

1995: John Witherow

See also[link]

• Funday Times
• Mrs. Mills Solves all Your Problems
• Sunday Times Fast Track 100
• The Sunday Times Magazine
• The Sunday Times Motorshow Live

References[link]

External links[link]

• Official website (Mobile)

Links to related articles v t e 2011–2012 News Corporation scandal Events News International phone hacking scandal: News of the World royal phone hacking scandal News Corporation takeover bid for BSkyB News of the World phone hacking scandal investigations Closure of the News of the World Companies and organisations News Corporation News International (News of the World The Sun The Times The Sunday Times) News Limited Other BSkyB Culture, Media and Sport Committee Federal Bureau of Investigation Harbottle & Lewis Independent Police Complaints Commission Metropolitan Police Ofcom Press Complaints Commission Serious Fraud Office Solicitors Regulation Authority People Alleged victims 7/7 attack victims Leslie Ash Gordon Brown Lee Chapman Charlotte Church Steve Coogan Anne Diamond Milly Dowler Garry Flitcroft Sheryl Gascoigne Hugh Grant Andy Gray Tessa Jowell Gerry and Kate McCann Elle Macpherson Sienna Miller Sara Payne John Prescott J. K. Rowling Metropolitan Police Sue Akers Peter Clarke Andy Hayman Paul Stephenson John Yates News Corporation Rebekah Brooks Jonathan Chapman Daniel Cloke Andy Coulson Tom Crone Wendi Deng Murdoch James Desborough Viet Dinh Ian Edmondson Clive Goodman Baron Grabiner Simon Greenberg Les Hinton Sean Hoare Lawrence Jacobs Joel Klein Stuart Kuttner William Lewis Paul McMullan Greg Miskiw Tom Mockridge Glenn Mulcaire James Murdoch Rupert Murdoch Colin Myler Lucy Panton Jamie Pyatt Jonathan Rees Neville Thurlbeck Neil Wallis James Weatherup Other Nick Davies Lord Fowler Lord Justice Leveson Jay Rockefeller Paul Staines Tom Watson John Whittingdale Investigations and legal cases United Kingdom HM Advocate v Sheridan and Sheridan Leveson Inquiry Operation Elveden Operation Kalmyk Operation Tuleta Operation Weeting Other Australia United States Other Dial M for Murdoch Foreign Corrupt Practices Act Hacked Off Operation Glade Operation Motorman Phone hacking Phreaking Politico-media complex Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act 2000 Social engineering Category Wikinews v t e Media in the United Kingdom   Newspapers, magazines and other periodicals Newspapers National Berliner: The Guardian · The Observer · Broadsheet: Financial Times · The Daily Telegraph, The Sunday Telegraph · The Sunday Times · Compact: i · The Independent, The Independent on Sunday · The Times · Middle-market: Daily Express, Sunday Express · Daily Mail, The Mail on Sunday · Tabloid: Daily Mirror, Sunday Mirror · Morning Star · The People · Daily Star, Daily Star Sunday · The Sun · Sunday Sport Regional and local Local newspapers in England · Regional newspapers in England · Newspapers in Northern Ireland · Newspapers in Scotland · Newspapers in Wales Other resources Defunct newspapers · Editors · Fleet Street · History · Journalists · Specialist newspapers · List by circulation Magazines and other periodicals Arts magazines · Business magazines · Comics · Defunct magazines · Fashion magazines · Literary magazines · Political magazines · Satirical magazines · Science and technology magazines · Women's magazines · List of magazines by circulation   Radio National stations BBC Analogue/digital: Radio 1 · Radio 2 · Radio 3 · Radio 4 · Radio 5 Live · Digital: Radio 1Xtra · Radio 4 Extra · Radio 5 Live Sports Extra · 6 Music · Asian Network · BBC National DAB (multiplex) Commercial Analogue/digital: Absolute Radio · Classic FM · Talksport · Digital: Absolute 80s · Absolute Radio 90s · Absolute Radio Extra · Amazing Radio · BFBS Radio · Digital One (multiplex) · Jazz FM · Planet Rock · Premier Christian Radio · Smooth Radio UK · UCB UK Regional and local stations BBC List of BBC Local Radio stations · List of BBC Regional Radio stations Commercial List of community radio stations · List of local commercial radio stations · List of semi-national analogue and digital stations Other stations List of hospital radio stations · Pirate radio · Restricted Service Licence (List of RSL stations) · List of satellite radio stations · List of student and schools radio Other Broadcasting companies · Broadcasting House · FM broadcasting · MediaCityUK · People · Programmes · Radio Academy · Radio Independents Group · RAJAR · Sony Radio Academy Awards · Most-listened-to programs   Television Principal channels BBC Analogue/digital: BBC One · BBC Two · Digital: BBC Three · BBC Four · BBC News · BBC Parliament · CBBC · CBeebies · BBC Alba · HD: BBC HD BSkyB Digital: Challenge · Pick TV · Sky1 · Sky2 · Sky 3D · Sky Arts · Sky Atlantic · Sky Betting and Gaming · Sky Living · Sky Livingit · Sky Movies · Sky Movies Box Office · Sky News · Sky Sports · Sky Sports F1 · Sky Sports News Channel Four Analogue/digital: Channel 4 · Digital: E4 · Film4 · More4 · 4seven · S4C Channel 5 Analogue/digital: Channel 5 · Digital: 5* · 5USA ITV Network Analogue/digital: ITV · Digital: ITV2 · ITV3 · ITV4 · CITV UKTV Digital: Alibi · Blighty · Dave · Eden · Gold · Good Food · Home · Really · Watch · Yesterday Services and platforms 4oD (Film4oD) · Analogue (Analogue terrestrial) · BBC iPlayer · blinkbox · BT Vision · Cable · Demand 5 · Digital (Digital terrestrial · List of channels) · Freesat (Freesat+ · List of channels) · Freeview (Freeview+) · Freewire (List of channels) · High-definition (List of channels) · ITV (ITV Player · STV Player) · Real Digital · Restricted Service Licence · Satellite (List of channels) · Sky (Freesat from Sky · Sky Anytime · Sky Anytime+ · Sky+ · Sky+ HD · List of channels) · Smallworld Cable (List of channels) · TalkTalk TV (List of channels) · Top Up TV · TVCatchup (List of channels) · Virgin Media (FilmFlex · TiVo · V+ · List of channels) · WightCable · YouView · Zattoo (List of channels) Studios BBC Pacific Quay · BBC Television Centre · Broadcasting House · Broadcasting House (Cardiff) · The Fountain Studios · The Leeds Studios · MediaCityUK · Granada Studios · Roath Lock · Teddington Studios Other Awards · Defunct channels · Edinburgh International Television Festival · History (List of years) · List of channels · Production companies · Programmes · Student television · Viewing statistics (Most-watched broadcasts)   Companies and organisations Companies Major companies Aegis Group · Archant · BBC · Bloomsbury Publishing · British Sky Broadcasting · BT Group · Channel Four · Chrysalis Group · Daily Mail and General Trust · Economist Group · EMAP · EMI Group · Endemol UK · Global Radio · Guardian Media Group · Haymarket Group · Informa · IPC Media · ITN · ITV · Johnston Press · Mecom Group · News International · Newsquest · Northern & Shell · Pearson · Press Holdings · Reed Elsevier · Reuters · STV Group · Syco · TalkTalk Group · Trinity Mirror · UBM · UTV Media · Virgin Media Other resources Broadcasting companies · Defunct media companies · Publishing companies (List of largest UK book publishers) · Record labels Government and regulatory bodies Advertising Standards Authority · BBC Trust · British Board of Film Classification · British Film Institute · Culture, Media and Sport Select Committee · Department for Culture, Media and Sport · Ofcom · Press Complaints Commission · UK Film Council · Welsh Fourth Channel Authority Industry and trades bodies British Academy of Film and Television Arts · British Phonographic Industry · Broadcasting, Entertainment, Cinematograph and Theatre Union · Clearcast · Digital TV Group · Digital UK · Equity · Federation Against Copyright Theft · National Union of Journalists · The Publishers Association · Royal Television Society · United Kingdom Independent Broadcasting Other BBC Academy · National Film and Television School · National Media Museum   Regional and student media Regional media Media in England (Media in Birmingham · Media in London · Media in Manchester) · Media in Northern Ireland · Media in Scotland (Media in Aberdeen · Media in Dundee · Media in Glasgow) · Media in Wales (Media in Cardiff) Student media Student television Category ·  Commons

The Times is a British daily national newspaper, first published in London in 1785 under the title The Daily Universal Register (it became The Times on 1 January 1788). The Times and its sister paper The Sunday Times (founded in 1821) are published by Times Newspapers, since 1981 a subsidiary of News International, itself wholly owned by the News Corporation group headed by Rupert Murdoch. The Times and The Sunday Times do not share editorial staff, were founded independently and have only had common ownership since 1967.

The Times is the first newspaper to have borne that name, lending it to numerous other papers around the world, including The Times of India (1838), The Straits Times (1845), The New York Times (1851), The Irish Times (1859), the Los Angeles Times (1881), The Seattle Times (1891), The Daily Times (Malawi) (1900), The Canberra Times (1926), and The Times (Malta) (1935). For distinguishing purposes it is therefore sometimes referred to, particularly in North America, as the "London Times" or "The Times of London".^[2][3]

The Times 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. In November 2006 The Times began printing headlines in a new font, Times Modern. The Times was printed in broadsheet format for 219 years, but switched to compact size in 2004 in an attempt to appeal more to younger readers and commuters using public transport. The Sunday Times remains a broadsheet.

Though traditionally a moderate newspaper and sometimes a supporter of the Conservatives, it supported the Labour Party in the 2001 and 2005 general elections.^[4] In 2004, according to MORI, the voting intentions of its readership were 40% for the Conservative Party, 29% for the Liberal Democrats, and 26% for Labour.^[5] The Times had an average daily circulation of 394,102 in March 2012.^[1] An American edition has been published since 6 June 2006.^[2]

History[link]

Front page of The Times from December 4, 1788.

1785 to 1890[link]

The Times was founded by publisher 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, Walter handed ownership and editorship to his son of the same name. Walter senior had 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 by 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 increased circulation and influence of the paper was based in part to its early adoption of the steam-driven rotary printing press. Distribution via steam trains to rapidly growing concentrations of urban populations helped ensure the profitability of the paper and its growing influence.^[6]

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^[7] with his dispatches back to England.

In other events of the nineteenth century, The Times opposed the repeal of the Corn Laws^{[citation needed]} 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, but from the 1850s The Times was beginning to suffer from the rise in competition from the penny press, notably The Daily Telegraph and The Morning Post.

During the 19th century, it was not infrequent for the Foreign Office to approach The Times and ask for continental intelligence, which was often superior to that conveyed by official sources.^[8]

1890 to 1981[link]

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. 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 29 and 31 July 1914, Wickham Steed, the Times's Chief Editor, argued that the British Empire should enter World War I.^[9] On 8 May 1920, also under the editorship of Steed, The Times in an 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. In the leader entitled "The Jewish Peril, a Disturbing Pamphlet: Call for Inquiry", Steed wrote about The Protocols of the Elders of Zion:

What are these 'Protocols'? Are they authentic? If so, what malevolent assembly concocted these plans and gloated over their exposition? Are they forgery? If so, whence comes the uncanny note of prophecy, prophecy in part fulfilled, in part so far gone in the way of fulfillment?".^[10]

The following year, when Philip Graves, the Constantinople (modern Istanbul) correspondent of The Times, exposed The Protocols as a forgery, 'The Times retracted the editorial of the previous year.

In 1922, John Jacob Astor, 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^{[citation needed]}, most notably Neville Chamberlain.

Kim Philby, a Soviet double agent, was 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.^[11]

Between 1941 and 1946, the left-wing British historian E.H. Carr was Assistant Editor. Carr was well known for the strongly pro-Soviet tone of his editorials.^[12] 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.^[13] 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)^[14]

On 3 May 1966 it started printing news on the front page for the first time - previously the front page featured small advertisements, usually of interest to the moneyed classes in British society.^{[citation needed]} In 1967, members of the Astor family sold the paper to Canadian publishing magnate Roy Thomson, The Thomson Corporation merged it with The Sunday Times to form Times Newspapers Limited.

An industrial dispute prompted the management to shut the paper for nearly a year (1 December 1978 – 12 November 1979).

The Thomson Corporation management were struggling to run the business due to the 1979 Energy Crisis and union demands. 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 meet the full Thomson remit, Australian media magnate Rupert Murdoch.

1981 to present: Murdoch-era[link]

In 1981, The Times and The Sunday Times were bought from Thomson by Rupert Murdoch's News International.^[15] The acquisition followed three weeks of intensive bargaining with the unions by company negotiators, John Collier and Bill O'Neill.

After 14 years as editor, William Rees-Mogg resigned the post upon the completion of the change of ownership.^[16] Murdoch began to make his mark on the paper by appointing Harold Evans as his replacement.^[17] One of his most important changes was 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 print room staff at The Times and The Sunday Times to be reduced by half.^{[citation needed]} 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, when The Times moved from New Printing House Square in Gray's Inn Road (near Fleet Street) to new offices in Wapping.^[18]

Robert Fisk,^[19] seven times British International Journalist of the Year,^[20] 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. He wrote in detail about his reasons for resigning from the paper due to meddling with his stories, and the paper's pro-Israel stance.^[21]

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. Published letters were long regarded as one of the paper's key constituents. Author/solicitor David Green of Castle Morris Pembrokeshire has had more letters published on the main letters page than any other known contributor – 158 by 31 January 2008. According to its leading article, "From Our Own Correspondents", removal of full postal addresses was in order to fit more letters onto the page.

In a 2007 meeting with the House of Lords Select Committee on Communications, which was investigating media ownership and the news, Murdoch stated that the law and the independent board prevented him from exercising editorial control.^[22]

In May 2008 printing of The Times switched from Wapping to new plants at Broxbourne on the outskirts of London, and Merseyside and Glasgow, enabling the paper to be produced with full colour on every page for the first time.

Some^[who?] allege that The Times' partisan opinion pieces also damage its status as 'paper of record,' particularly when attacking interests that go against those of its parent company – News International. In 2010 it published an opinion piece attacking the BBC for being 'one of a group of' signatories to a letter criticising BSkyB share options in October 2010.^[23]

In March 2012, it became the first British newspaper to formally endorse same-sex marriage.

Content[link]

Copies of The Times and supplements from December 2005

The Times features news for the first half of the paper with the leading articles on the second page, the Opinion/Comment section begins after the first news section with world news normally following 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.

[edit] Times2

The Times's main supplement is the times2, featuring various lifestyle columns.^{[clarification needed]} It was discontinued on 1 March 2010 but reintroduced on 11 October 2010 after negative feedback. Its regular features include a puzzles section called Mind Games. Its previous incarnation began on 5 September 2005, before which it was called T2 and previously Times 2. Regular features include columns by a different columnist each weekday. There was a column by Marcus du Sautoy each Wednesday, for example. The back pages are devoted to puzzles and contain sudoku, "Killer Sudoku", "KenKen", word polygon puzzles, and a crossword simpler and more concise than the main "Times Crossword".

The supplement contains arts and lifestyle features, TV and radio listings and reviews.

[edit] The Game

The Game is included in the newspaper on Mondays, and details all the weekend's 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 supplements[link]

The Saturday edition of The Times contains 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 Times Magazine (columns on various topics), and Playlist (an entertainment listings guide).

Saturday Review is the first regular supplement published in broadsheet format since the paper switched to a compact size in 2004.

At the beginning of summer 2011 Saturday Review switched to the tabloid format

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 Giles Coren, Food and Drink Writer of the Year in 2005.

Online presence[link]

The Times and The Sunday Times have had an online presence since March 1999, originally at the-times.co.uk and sunday-times.co.uk, and later at timesonline.co.uk.^[24] There are now two websites: thetimes.co.uk is aimed at daily readers, and the thesundaytimes.co.uk site at providing weekly magazine-like content. There are also iPad and Android editions of both newspapers. Since July 2010, News International has required readers who do not subscribe to the print edition to pay £2 per week to read The Times and The Sunday Times online.^[25]

Visits to the websites have decreased by 87% since the paywall was introduced, from 21 million unique users per month to 2.7 million.^[26] In April 2009, the timesonline site had a readership of 750,000 readers per day.^[27] As of October 2011, there were around 111,000 subscribers to the Times' digital products ^[28]

Ownership[link]

John Walter, the founder of The Times

The Times has had the following eight owners since its foundation in 1785:

• 1785 to 1803 - John Walter;
• 1803 to 1847 - John Walter, 2nd;
• 1847 to 1894 - John Walter, 3rd;
• 1894 to 1908 - Arthur Fraser Walter;
• 1908 to 1922 - Lord Northcliffe;
• 1922 to 1966 - Astor family;
• 1966 to 1981 - Roy Thomson; and
• 1981 to present - News International (a wholly owned subsidiary of News Corporation, run by Rupert Murdoch).

Readership[link]

At the time of Harold Evans' appointment as editor in 1981, The Times had an average daily sale of 282,000 copies, in comparision to the 1.4 million daily sales of its traditional rival The Daily Telegraph.^[29] By November 2005 The Times sold an average of 691,283 copies per day, the second-highest of any British "quality" newspaper (after The Daily Telegraph, which had a circulation of 903,405 copies in the period), and the highest in terms of full-rate sales.^[30] By March 2012 The Times' average daily circulation had fallen to 394,102 copies, compared to The Daily Telegraph's 576,378, with the two retaining respectively the second-highest and highest circulations among British "quality" newspapers.^[1] In contrast The Sun, the highest-selling "tabloid" daily newspaper in the United Kingdom, sold an average of 2,614,725 copies in March 2012, and the Daily Mail, the highest-selling "middle market" British daily newspaper, sold an average of 1,952,524 copies in the period.^[1]

In a 2009 national readership survey The Times was found to have the highest number of ABC1 25–44 readers and the largest numbers of readers in London of any of the "quality" papers.^[31]

Typeface[link]

An example of the Times New Roman font

In 1908 The Times started using the Monotype Modern typeface.^[32]

The Times commissioned the serif typeface Times New Roman, created by Victor Lardent at the English branch of Monotype, in 1931.^[33] It was commissioned after Stanley Morison had written an article criticizing The Times for being badly printed and typographically antiquated.^[34] The font was supervised by Morison and drawn by Victor Lardent, an artist from the advertising department of The Times. Morison used an older font named Plantin as the basis for his design, but made revisions for legibility and economy of space. Times New Roman made its debut in the 3 October 1932 issue of The Times newspaper.^[35] After one year, the design was released for commercial sale. The Times stayed with Times New Roman for 40 years, but new production techniques and the format change from broadsheet to tabloid in 2004 have caused the newspaper to switch font five times since 1972. However, all the new fonts have been variants of the original New Roman font:

• Times Europa was designed by Walter Tracy in 1972 for The Times, as a sturdier alternative to the Times font family, designed for the demands of faster printing presses and cheaper paper. The typeface features more open counter spaces.
• Times Roman replaced Times Europa on 30 August 1982.^[36]
• Times Millennium was made in 1991,^[36] drawn by Gunnlaugur Briem on the instructions of Aurobind Patel, composing manager of News International.
• Times Classic first appeared in 2001.^[37] Designed as an economical face by the British type team of Dave Farey and Richard Dawson, it took advantage of the new PC-based publishing system at the newspaper, while obviating the production shortcomings of its predecessor Times Millennium. The new typeface included 120 letters per font. Initially the family comprised ten fonts, but a condensed version was added in 2004.
• Times Modern was unveiled on 20 November 2006, as the successor of Times Classic.^[36] Designed for improving legibility in smaller font sizes, it uses 45-degree angled bracket serifs. The font was published by Elsner + Flake as EF Times Modern; it was designed by Research Studios, led by Ben Preston (deputy editor of The Times) and designer Neville Brody.^[38]

Political allegiance[link]

The Times had declared its support for Clement Attlee's Labour at the 1945 general election; the party went on to win the election by a landslide over Winston Churchill's Conservative government. However, the newspaper reverted to the Tories for the next election five years later. It supported the Conservatives for the subsequent three elections, followed by support for both the Conservatives and the Liberal Party for the next five elections, expressly supporting a Con-Lib coalition in 1974. The paper then backed the Conservatives solidly until 2001.

For the 2001 general election The Times declared its support for Tony Blair's Labour government, which was re-elected by a landslide. It supported Labour again in 2005, when Labour achieved a third successive win, though with a reduced majority.^[39] For the 2010 general election, however, the newspaper declared its support for the Tories once again; the election ended in the Tories taking the most votes and seats but having to form a coalition with the Liberal Democrats in order to form a government as they had failed to gain an overall majority.^[40]

This makes it the most varied newspaper in terms of political support in British history.^[41]

Sponsorships[link]

The Times, along with the British Film Institute, sponsors the "The Times" bfi London Film Festival.

The Times sponsors the Cheltenham Literature Festival and the Asia House Festival of Asian Literature at Asia House, London.

Notable people[link]

Editors[link]

Notable columnists and journalists[link]

Related publications[link]

[edit] Times Literary Supplement

The Times Literary Supplement (TLS) is a separately-paid-for weekly literature and society magazine.

[edit] The Times Science Review

Between 1951 and 1966 The Times published a separately-paid-for quarterly science review, The Times Science Review. Remarkably, in 1953 both the newspaper and its science supplement failed to report on the discovery of the structure of DNA in Cambridge, which was reported on by both the News Chronicle and The New York Times.

The Times started a new (but free) monthly science magazine, Eureka, in October 2009.

Times Atlases[link]

(Times Books Group Ltd)

• The Times Comprehensive Atlas of the World, 2007 ISBN 978-0-00-780150-3

In fiction[link]

• In the dystopian future world of George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four, The Times has 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.
• Rex Stout's fictional detective Nero Wolfe is described as fond of solving the London Times' crossword puzzle at his New York home, in preference to those of American papers.
• In the James Bond series by Ian Fleming, James Bond, reads The Times. As described by Fleming in From Russia, with Love: "The Times was the only paper that Bond ever read."

See also[link]

Journalism portal

• List of newspapers by date

[edit] References