The Times
The Times is a British daily national newspaper based in London. It began in 1785 under the title The Daily Universal Register, adopting its modern name on 1 January 1788. The Times and its sister paper The Sunday Times (founded in 1821) are published by Times Media, since 1981 a subsidiary of News UK, in turn wholly owned by News Corp. The Times and The Sunday Times, which do not share editorial staff, were founded independently and have had common ownership only since 1966.[2] In general, the political position of The Times is considered to be centre-right.[3]
This article is about the British newspaper based in London. For other uses, see The Times (disambiguation).Type
1 January 1785 (as The Daily Universal Register)
The News Building, London
1 London Bridge Place, SE1 9GF
United Kingdom
365,880 (as of March 2020)[1]
The Times was the first newspaper to bear that name, inspiring numerous other papers around the world, such as The Times of India and The New York Times. In countries where these other titles are popular, the newspaper is often referred to as The London Times[4] or The Times of London,[5] although the newspaper is of national scope and distribution. It is considered a newspaper of record in the UK.[6]
The Times had an average daily circulation of 365,880 in March 2020; in the same period, The Sunday Times had an average weekly circulation of 647,622.[1] The two newspapers also had 304,000 digital-only paid subscribers as of June 2019.[7] An American edition of The Times has been published since 6 June 2006.[8] The Times has been heavily used by scholars and researchers because of its widespread availability in libraries and its detailed index. A complete historical file of the digitised paper, up to 2019, is online from Gale Cengage Learning.[9][10]
The Times has had the following eight owners since its foundation in 1785:[77]
Readership[edit]
The Times had a circulation of 70,405 on 5 September 1870, due to a reduction in price and the Franco-Prussian War.[80][81][82] The Times had a circulation of 150,000 in March 1914, due to a reduction in price.[83] The Times had a circulation of 248,338 in 1958, a circulation of 408,300 in 1968, and a circulation of 295,863 in 1978.[84] At the time of Harold Evans' appointment as editor in 1981, The Times had an average daily sale of 282,000 copies in comparison to the 1.4 million daily sales of its traditional rival The Daily Telegraph.[40] By 1988, The Times had a circulation of 443,462.[84] 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.[85] By March 2014, average daily circulation of The Times had fallen to 394,448 copies,[86] compared to The Daily Telegraph's 523,048,[87] with the two retaining respectively the second-highest and highest circulations among British "quality" newspapers. In contrast The Sun, the highest-selling "tabloid" daily newspaper in the United Kingdom, sold an average of 2,069,809 copies in March 2014,[88] and the Daily Mail, the highest-selling "middle market" British daily newspaper, sold an average of 1,708,006 copies in the period.[89]
The Sunday Times has a significantly higher circulation than The Times, and sometimes outsells The Sunday Telegraph. In January 2019, The Times had a circulation of 417,298[90] and The Sunday Times 712,291.[90]
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.[91]
The Times is the originator of the widely used Times New Roman typeface, originally developed by Stanley Morison of The Times in collaboration with Monotype Imaging for its legibility in low-tech printing. In November 2006, The Times began printing headlines in a new typeface, 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.
In 1908, The Times started using the Monotype Modern typeface.[93]
The Times commissioned the serif typeface Times New Roman, created by Victor Lardent at the English branch of Monotype, in 1931.[94] It was commissioned after Stanley Morison had written an article criticizing The Times for being badly printed and typographically antiquated.[95] The typeface was supervised by Morison and drawn by Victor Lardent, an artist from the advertising department of The Times. Morison used an older typeface 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 issue of 3 October 1932.[96] 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 typeface five times since 1972. However, all the new typeface have been variants of the original New Roman type:
Sponsorships[edit]
The Times, along with the British Film Institute, sponsors "The Times" bfi London Film Festival.[113] It also sponsors the Cheltenham Literature Festival and the Asia House Festival of Asian Literature at Asia House, London.[114]
Related publications[edit]
An Irish digital edition of the paper was launched in September 2015 at TheTimes.ie.[116][117] A print edition was launched in June 2017, replacing the international edition previously distributed in Ireland.[118] The Irish edition was set to close in June 2019 with the loss of 20 jobs.[119]
The Times Literary Supplement (TLS) first appeared in 1902 as a supplement to The Times, becoming a separately paid-for weekly literature and society magazine in 1914.[120] The TLS is owned and published by News International and co-operates closely with The Times, with its online version hosted on The Times website, and its editorial offices based in 1 London Bridge Street, London.[121]
Between 1951 and 1966, The Times published a separately paid-for quarterly science review, The Times Science Review. The Times started a new, free, monthly science magazine, Eureka, in October 2009.[122] The magazine closed in October 2012.[123]
The Times Review of Industry[124] (which began in 1947)[125] and Technology (which began in 1957)[126] merged in March 1963[127] to become The Times Review of Industry & Technology.[128] From 1952, The Times Review of Industry included the London and Cambridge Economic Bulletin.[129]
Times Atlases have been produced since 1895. They are currently produced by the Collins Bartholomew imprint of HarperCollins Publishers. The flagship product is The Times Comprehensive Atlas of the World.[130]
In 1971, The Times began publishing the Times Higher Education Supplement (now known as the Times Higher Education) which focuses its coverage on tertiary education.[131]
Historical value[edit]
In 1915, R P Farley said "the files of the Times must be constantly studied" as an authority for the political and social history of the English people during the period from the Reform Bill 1832 to the Education Act 1870 (1832 to 1870).[132] From 1971 to 1973, John Joseph Bagley said The Times is "valuable" as a source of Nineteenth Century English history,[133] and that the annual index to The Times is useful for the Twentieth Century.[134] In 2003, Richard Krzys said The Times is very reliable as a source of history.[135] In 2016, Denise Bates said The Times is "indispensable" as a source for historical events of national importance.[136]
In 2019, James Oldham said The Times is an important source for nisi prius trials.[137] In 2015, Johnston and Plummer said that The Times is an important source for music reviews.[138]
In popular culture[edit]
In the dystopian future world of George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four, The Times has been transformed into an organ of the totalitarian ruling party.[139] The book's lead character Winston Smith is employed in the task of rewriting past issues of the newspaper for the Ministry of Truth.[140]
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.[141][142]
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."[143]
