The History of the Times

by Graham Stewart

  In the event, the horse trading of a hung parliament was avoided. After a tense evening in which exit polls had pointed to conflicting results, the early morning editions of The Times for 10 April proclaimed the Conservatives’ victory. It was an extraordinary turnaround – although Major restricted himself to the observation that the result had been ‘satisfactory’. In fact, the Tories were the first party to win four general elections in succession since the restricted franchises of the early nineteenth century. Major’s twenty-one-seat majority was a slim one but sufficient to govern unaided. Kinnock’s achievement was to have made his party almost electable. It was not enough and he immediately announced his intention to step down. The Liberal Democrat breakthrough was once again postponed for another election.

  Twelve of the twenty-one daily and Sunday national newspapers endorsed the Conservatives (representing a total sale of over eighteen million) compared to five who backed Labour (8.6 million sales) while four (with 1.5 million copies) refused to endorse any party. Having its polling-day front page announcing ‘If Kinnock wins today will the last person to leave Britain please turn out the lights’, the Sun greeted the results with the proclamation, ‘It’s the Sun Wot Won It!’ Certainly there appeared to be a last-minute swing towards the Tories from readers of Tory-supporting papers which had pulled out all the journalistic stops of persuasion – and abuse – when it looked like Kinnock might win. The extent to which the swing was a consequence of the editorial line was, of course, hard to gauge. MORI identified a 4 per cent swing from Sun readers towards the Tories in the final week of campaigning. But there was a 2.5 per cent swing towards the Tories from readers of the Labour-supporting Daily Mirror. Having taken an even-handed approach, Today’s last-minute endorsement of the Conservatives appeared to make little appreciable difference. The limited influence of the press was best expressed by the FT which announced it was time for Labour and saw the proportion of its readers voting Conservative rise by 7 per cent in the final week to 65 per cent.81 As far as The Times’s role in the verdict of 1992 was concerned, Anatole Kaletsky’s analysis of Labour’s tax plans probably had the greatest effect. The moderately affluent but hard-working families he suggested would be hit hardest by John Smith’s proposals resembled a significant section of the newspaper’s core readership.

  Whether the opinions expressed in the national newspapers swung the election remains a moot point. Yet, the result did nothing to dissuade those at Labour headquarters that – at the risk of style over substance – winning over the media would be central to victory in 1997. For the moment, though, it was Major who appeared to have the bright future before him. Within forty-eight hours of the Tory victory, Peter Riddell was prophesying the coming parliamentary term in which the Conservatives’ health and education reforms would reach fruition with most large hospitals becoming trusts, most GPs becoming independent fundholders and a wave of schools seeking grant-maintained status. As for the issue of Europe, ‘potential splits within the Tory party over the EC which might have arisen in opposition should be avoidable’. The Conservative Party, Riddell suggested, now appeared ‘to be not only the natural party of government but also perhaps the perpetual one, like the Liberal Democrats in Japan’.82

  VII

  On 19 January 1991, in the midst of the Gulf War, The Times introduced the greatest change to its front page since replacing advertisements with news there in 1966. A colour photograph appeared. Being The Times, the extent of this revolution was modified by demonstrating the amazing new colour facility with a photograph of the night sky. The depiction was, however, Baghdad nocturne. The darkness was broken up with shards of light as the city came under air attack. For The Times, it heralded a new dawn.

  In the past, colour had largely been restricted to the Saturday supplements and for some advertisements. This had been made possible by using pre-printed gravure colour, but the process was expensive and needed considerable pre-planning. Eddy Shah’s Today had been the first national daily to use ROP (run of paper) colour printing, although the results had not always been satisfactory. It was in response to Robert Maxwell’s decision to print the Daily Mirror with colour that the reluctant Murdoch had finally been persuaded to purchase colour presses for Wapping, Knowsley on Merseyside and Kinning Park in Glasgow. Thus The Times became the beneficiary of an investment made primarily to boost Murdoch’s tabloid sales. For The Times, the revolution was more gradual than the dramatic explosions depicted on the first edition suggested. Technological problems and limited colour availability often ensured that the paper was still largely a monochrome product in the months ahead. Annoyingly, when colour was available, it was not always possible to run it on the front page where its use had most visual impact. There were a few readers for whom any obvious improvement was nonetheless a retrograde step, but as colour photography began, however slowly, to manifest itself with increasing frequency in the paper so it gave The Times a chance to appeal to a population which, used to colour television, had developed a more bright and visual expectation of news presentation.

  Towards the end of the year, the paper underwent another change of appearance. On 25 November 1991, The Times changed its typeface. Between 1932 and 1972 it had been set in Times New Roman, a revolutionary font designed by the paper’s typographer, Stanley Morison, that established itself as the most popular typeface in the world. In 1972, the paper had adopted the subtly modified Times Europa which was clearer on the Linotype machinery and lighter paper then being used. Changes in typesetting called for the revision of 1991. Times New Roman and its derivatives had been designed for the old hot metal machinery. Times Millennium, the work of Aurobind Patel, was designed with the effect of computer typesetting in mind. The task of overseeing its introduction fell to David Driver, the paper’s design editor. By producing less chunky text, it enabled more words to be fitted in while increasing the amount of white space on the page. The result looked smarter and was generally considered stylish although the reader reaction suggested that the vast majority of the public scarcely registered any difference – which was not necessarily a bad sign. It was digitized type for what was becoming a digitized newspaper. On 18 September 1992, the last cut and paste bromide page was made up for The Times. Thereafter, the paper was totally set by electronic page make-up.

  Where The Times was falling behind was in its availability across the European continent. There, the FT had led the way, with editions for the European market printed from Frankfurt in 1979, followed by satellite printing in the United States, in New Jersey in 1985 and at a site near Lille in 1988. The results were impressive. By the end of the decade, the FT was selling ninety-thousand copies abroad and had effectively seen off the challenge from the Wall Street Journal’s Europe edition on the Continent. By 1990, the Guardian and the Independent were also being printed in Europe and it was essential that The Times, with an overseas sale of 22,000 daily, followed suit as soon as the expensive refitting of Wapping could be completed.83 Jenkins was understandably impatient to see this achieved, not least because the continental editions of The Times’s rivals were what nudged them ahead in the circulation figures.84 Such was his desperation that he even suggested News International should consider buying the imperilled European, partly to stop it falling into a rivals’ hands and partly to use it as the core for a new-look European first or weekly edition of The Times.85 In the event, it was not until November 1995 that The Times transmitted its second edition via satellite to a printing plant near Charleroi in Belgium to reach newsstands across Europe and the Middle East before the morning rush hour.

  The editor had good reason to be anxious about sales. In October 1990, The Times, having put its price up by five pence, slipped back behind the Guardian. In the succeeding months, the Guardian started stretching its lead (while the Telegraph remained seemingly unassailable with over one million daily sales). More alarmingly, far from being beaten back by Jenkins’s upmarket pitch, the Independent had cut the daily sales deficit with The Times fr
om twenty thousand in January 1990 to four thousand a year later. In April 1992, its daily sales overtook The Times. It was a blip and by June The Times had regained a 14,000 lead. But the damage was done. Jenkins had promised to repel the Independent’s tanks from The Times’s lawn. Instead, two years into his tenure (the time in which he had asked to do the job) the Independent’s gun barrels were nudging the front door.

  Ironically, the moment in which the Independent appeared to be on the brink of breaking The Times was also the moment when the young pretender to the upmarket readership had critically overstretched itself. Goaded by the prospect of the Sunday Correspondent cornering a market in which it believed it had a right to make money for itself, the Independent had launched the Independent on Sunday. This succeeded in its primary aims of closing down the Correspondent and in building a fair-sized circulation for the IoS (or Sindy) in its own right. But as the advertising recession began to take effect, so problems for the Sindy mounted and it began to drain the group’s profitability. During 1991, the Sunday paper’s loses hovered around £6 million. Resources that could have been deployed by the Independent against The Times were, instead, redeployed to shore up the Sunday battlefront. Whittam Smith sought a solution by attempting to integrate the Sunday operation with the weekday paper, cutting jobs – among which was that of his one-time friend and fellow Independent founding father, Stephen Glover. The Independent went from being a profitable business sensation to a desperate organization in search of a moneyed rescuer. It was the perfect moment for The Times to counterattack but that would need fresh investment. This was still some months away.

  The foundations of hope were News International’s improving financial situation. The company was clawing itself back from the brink and Sky, the great money drainer, at last had rosier prospects. During 1992, The Times began to expand again. It had more columns of editorial content than its broadsheet rivals.86 Jenkins had told Murdoch he wanted two years to turn the paper around. It was clear he would need a little more in order to prove his efforts had a commercial return. Murdoch’s impatience was assumed when word went round that one of his closest associates, Irwin Stelzer, had joked at a News Corp. conference that The Times was the newspaper one hid within one’s copy of the Sun. In fact, neither Murdoch nor Andrew Knight were determined to be done with Jenkins. Giving him a five-year contract was even mooted. Jenkins, however, was reluctant to commit to more than one year at a time and had, of course, told his wife that he wanted out within the end of his third year.87 Faced with this, the proprietor and his chief executive began to look for a candidate who wanted to settle into the post for a longer spell. It was their choice of replacement, rather more than their decision to replace Jenkins several months earlier than he had hoped, that caused a breakdown in relations.

  Knight believed a possible successor to Jenkins could be Paul Dacre, the editor of the Evening Standard. Knight told Murdoch that Dacre had an unparalleled combination of ‘drive, intellect and overall grasp’.88 When they met, Dacre impressed Murdoch with his commanding view of how The Times’s fortunes could be improved. Murdoch offered Dacre the editorship. Dacre confirmed he was interested but pointed out that as a matter of courtesy he would not do a deal while his employer, Vere Rothermere, was out of the country.89 It was then that things started to fall apart. Murdoch telephoned Jenkins to tell him that he thought Dacre could be a worthy successor. The prospect hit Jenkins like a hammer blow. He was aghast at the thought that all the effort he had put into taking the paper upmarket was about to be casually undone. He told Murdoch, in no uncertain terms, that the idea was disastrous and that staff morale would collapse if Dacre was appointed. Murdoch, it seemed, was about to ditch Jenkins’s upmarket strategy. Given that Jenkins had originally asked for only two years to do the job he could not really complain at being taken at face value. ‘At the time, I was upset not because I was stopping being editor, but because of Dacre,’ he later claimed, adding, ‘the person I thought should succeed was Peter Stothard’.90 Tense days passed while Jenkins ruminated on the possibility that all his efforts to save The Times from a mid-market fate were about to be thrown away by a proprietor who simply did not understand what was special about his prize possession.

  If such a mid-market fate was in store, it was not to come from Paul Dacre. When he told Rothermere that he was considering accepting the job at The Times, the Associated Newspapers owner offered him the editorship of the Daily Mail instead. Rothermere and Dacre had long worked well together and Dacre decided to stay in the fold by accepting the task of steering the Mail.91 The appearance in the Associated-owned Evening Standard of the news that Dacre had been approached by The Times but had rebuffed the offer was acutely embarrassing for Jenkins because it brought into the public domain that his time as editor was up before he had made any such announcement. Dacre went on to preside over a decade of strong growth at the Daily Mail, for which success he was loathed by metropolitan liberal opinion. Murdoch, however, appeared unruffled by the rejection and after he had seen the campaigning approach Dacre brought to the Mail later reflected that he would not have been right for The Times.92 This was also the opinion of most senior journalists at The Times.93

  With the news of the Dacre offer leaked, it was important to get on with finding a replacement who would accept the job. Various ideas were mooted, including seeking an appointment from outside the industry.94 Knight telephoned Charles Wilson at his new perch at Mirror Group Newspapers, asking who he thought would make the best editor. Wilson replied that there were two serious candidates, Peter Stothard and John Bryant, and that whichever was not given the office should serve as deputy.95 On 23 July, it was announced that Peter Stothard would succeed Simon Jenkins when he stepped down as editor in October.

  VII

  The handling and timing of Jenkins’s departure was poor. When he stepped down, the Independent was still breathing down The Times’s neck and, judged purely by circulation, he had failed in his objectives. Had he stayed on, the Independent’s challenge would have crumbled, not least under the weight of its own mounting financial problems. It was finally being confronted with the very problems that had dogged Jenkins, whose editorship had coincided with a spending freeze caused by News Corp.’s near collapse. The budget for promoting The Times had been decimated. It was Jenkins’s misfortune that he left just as the parent company’s fortunes were recovering and a massive investment in the paper would become possible.

  The sorrow among staff at his departure was generally less strongly felt than the joy at his initial appointment. Partly, this was because the journalists felt comfortable with Peter Stothard as a replacement. In transforming The Times into a newspaper he thought good enough to write for himself, Jenkins had been single-minded and ruthless. This was a way to turn around a newspaper but not to win the affection of its employees. He had not taken the trouble to cultivate friendships. He drew comfort from a wide range of cultural interests and in a personal life that resided outside the windowless warehouse of Wapping. Towards colleagues, Charlie Wilson’s line of invective had been far stronger and he had frequently seemed on the point of doing someone a personal injury, but he had also shown a tender streak towards those in trouble or in need of help. For all his occasional roughness, Wilson always had an easy relationship with his backbench: ‘like a Field Marshal enjoying the company of his generals’, as one of the backbench’s most accomplished practitioners, Simon Pearson, put it.96 Jenkins was far more self-assured in his manner. He had a clear idea about what he wanted and this was not in keeping with a collegiate approach. It did not translate into familiar badinage. The vehemence of his attitude when errors appeared in the paper even earned him the enmity of some who thought his response disproportionate. In this sense, he was a leader more interested in being feared than loved.

  Yet, reflecting on his experience of five Times editors, the financial editor, Graham Searjeant, took the view that Jenkins was the one who ‘saved the paper.’97 He was right to insist on th
e highest standards if it was to have any hope of regaining its former reputation for accuracy. Whether The Times sunk or swam was ultimately a better judgment of his tenure than whether he was aloof to some of his staff. He had worked incredibly hard. He had stayed in the office well into the evening, taking the 8.30 conference where the first edition was analysed and modified, before leaving for an evening of social engagements only to return to the office at 11.30 to take charge once again. Had he benefited, as his successor did, from a night editor of the skill and self-confidence of David Ruddock, he might have felt able to leave the backbench more to its own devices. He was also hampered by the departure of John Bryant as deputy editor, another journalist who understood the nuts and bolts of putting a paper to bed. Happily, he was able to welcome Bryant back as deputy editor before leaving the chair himself, but Bryant’s professional touch was missed for most of Jenkins’s editorship.

  Jenkins viewed his own two years in the chair with satisfaction: ‘We just about stabilised the circulation but the most important thing to me was to reverse the loss of reputation.’98 He had very effectively spiked the guns of those who asserted that The Times lacked its former intellectual vigour. In focusing on hiring specialists, Jenkins helped the paper to regain its reputation as a source of information and good writing, and not just a new-sorientated paper written by reporters. This was important. In Anatole Kaletsky he had hired one of the foremost economic commentators of the age. Another perceptive journalist brought over from the FT was Peter Riddell who would similarly play a major and steadying role in the years ahead. In particular, The Times regained from the Independent the initiative over arts coverage, thanks in no small part to the contributions of Marcus Binney, Richard Cork and Rodney Milnes.