The Times

‘The Times’ was first published in 1785. It is a ‘quality’ newspaper and until 2003 was a broadsheet. It has since moved to tabloid size, much like all other quality newspapers, excluding The Daily Telegraph. Since 1981 The Times has been owned by News International, the European subsidiary of News Corporation; this is largely owned by Rupert Murdoch. The paper is currently edited by James Harding.

Politically, The Times is known to be a centre right standing paper, supporting the Conservative Party; however during the 2001 and 2005 elections it switched allegiance to Tony Blair’s Labour Party. It switched back to its Conservative allegiance before the 2010 election, choosing to support David Cameron. Despite this, in 2005 MORI (The UK’s second largest polling organisation) said that the voting intentions of The Times readership was 40% for the Conservative Party, 29% for the Liberal Democrats and 26% for Labour. This helps us to understand the papers shifts in allegiance.

The Times currently sells around 500,000 copies every day. They claim to be the number one daily newspaper for business, with more readers than the Financial Times and the Daily Telegraph combined. They claim to have 1.6 million readers daily and believe that 88 per cent of these readers belong to social classes ABC1. Its readers are believed to have an average yearly income of £42,000.

One thing that sets the times apart from other newspapers is its online content. Whereas most newspaper websites are free to view, The Times is a subscription service. Customers have to pay £1, for one days access, or £2 per week. It could be argued that Rupert Murdoch and the News Corporation Group have solved the problem of constant decline of newspaper sales. Their readers are devoted to the paper and are likely to stick with The Times, even though it may cost them. The Sun however remains free. This is likely to reflect the papers respective demographics, a sun reader, likely to be in the C2D bracket, is more likely to be a manual worker, or a labourer. This means that they are less likely to have time throughout the day to read a newspaper online in detail. A times reader is more likely to be an office worker, or in self employment. This means that they will spend a larger portion of their time in front of a computer; it may therefore make sense financially for them to subscribe to the website, rather than buy the newspaper daily.

The Times is also famous for its obituaries and each year prints more than 900. The majority are written by specialists but many people contribute to their contents. Between 5,000 and 6,000 written obituaries on the famous, and occasionally the notorious, are kept on file. The letters page is also famous in its own right, each letter beginning with ‘Dear Sir.’ Around 1,500 letters are believed to be received every week. The letters printed tend to be punchy, witty and of course relevant to the day’s news. This in many ways reflects the writing styles of most of the columnists in The Times; these include Daniel Finkelstein, Alice Thomson, Ken Macdonald, Tina Brown and my personal favourite: Caitlin Moran.