The Sunday Times (UK)
Encyclopedia
The Sunday Times is a Sunday broadsheet
Broadsheet
Broadsheet is the largest of the various newspaper formats and is characterized by long vertical pages . The term derives from types of popular prints usually just of a single sheet, sold on the streets and containing various types of material, from ballads to political satire. The first broadsheet...

 newspaper, distributed in the United Kingdom. The Sunday Times is published by Times Newspapers Ltd, a subsidiary of News International
News International
News International Ltd is the United Kingdom newspaper publishing division of News Corporation. Until June 2002, it was called News International plc....

, which is in turn owned by News Corporation
News Corporation
News Corporation or News Corp. is an American multinational media conglomerate. It is the world's second-largest media conglomerate as of 2011 in terms of revenue, and the world's third largest in entertainment as of 2009, although the BBC remains the world's largest broadcaster...

. Times Newspapers also owns The Times
The Times
The Times is a British daily national newspaper, first published in London in 1785 under the title The Daily Universal Register . The Times and its sister paper The Sunday Times are published by Times Newspapers Limited, a subsidiary since 1981 of News International...

, but the two papers were founded independently and came under common ownership
Common ownership
Common ownership is a principle according to which the assets of an enterprise or other organization are held indivisibly rather than in the names of the individual members or by a public institution such as a governmental body. It is therefore in contrast to public ownership...

 only in 1966. Rupert Murdoch
Rupert Murdoch
Keith Rupert Murdoch, AC, KSG is an Australian-American business magnate. He is the founder and Chairman and CEO of , the world's second-largest media conglomerate....

's News International acquired the papers in 1981. Each year The Sunday Times publishes a Rich List
Sunday Times Rich List
The Sunday Times Rich List is a list of the 1,000 wealthiest people or families in the United Kingdom, updated annually in April and published as a magazine supplement by British national Sunday newspaper The Sunday Times since 1989...

—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 Daily Telegraph
The Daily Telegraph is a daily morning broadsheet newspaper distributed throughout the United Kingdom and internationally. The newspaper was founded by Arthur B...

, 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
Sunday Telegraph
The Sunday Telegraph is a British broadsheet newspaper, founded in February 1961. It is the sister paper of The Daily Telegraph, but is run separately with a different editorial staff, although there is some cross-usage of stories...

, The Observer
The Observer
The Observer is a British newspaper, published on Sundays. In the same place on the political spectrum as its daily sister paper The Guardian, which acquired it in 1993, it takes a liberal or social democratic line on most issues. It is the world's oldest Sunday newspaper.-Origins:The first issue,...

 
and The Independent on Sunday combined. It maintains the larger broadsheet
Broadsheet
Broadsheet is the largest of the various newspaper formats and is characterized by long vertical pages . The term derives from types of popular prints usually just of a single sheet, sold on the streets and containing various types of material, from ballads to political satire. The first 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
Berliner (format)
Berliner, or "midi", is a newspaper format with pages normally measuring about . The Berliner format is slightly taller and marginally wider than the tabloid/compact format; and is both narrower and shorter than the broadsheet format....

 format with colour throughout all sections.

In July 2011, The Sunday Times was implicated in the phone hacking scandal
News of the World phone hacking affair
The News International phone-hacking scandal is an ongoing controversy involving mainly the News of the World but also other British tabloid newspapers published by News International, a subsidiary of News Corporation. Employees of the newspaper were accused of engaging in phone hacking, police...

 involving the News of the World
News of the World
The News of the World was a national red top newspaper published in the United Kingdom from 1843 to 2011. It was at one time the biggest selling English language newspaper in the world, and at closure still had one of the highest English language circulations...

, another Murdoch newspaper. Former British prime minister Gordon Brown
Gordon Brown
James Gordon Brown is a British Labour Party politician who was the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom and Leader of the Labour Party from 2007 until 2010. He previously served as Chancellor of the Exchequer in the Labour Government from 1997 to 2007...

 accused the Sunday Times of employing "known criminals" to impersonate him and obtain his private financial records. Brown's bank reported that an investigator employed by the Sunday Times repeatedly impersonated Brown to gain access to his bank account records.

History

The paper was launched as The New Observer in 1821; Observer
The Observer
The Observer is a British newspaper, published on Sundays. In the same place on the political spectrum as its daily sister paper The Guardian, which acquired it in 1993, it takes a liberal or social democratic line on most issues. It is the world's oldest Sunday newspaper.-Origins:The first issue,...

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
The Times
The Times is a British daily national newspaper, first published in London in 1785 under the title The Daily Universal Register . The Times and its sister paper The Sunday Times are published by Times Newspapers Limited, a subsidiary since 1981 of News International...

.

Rachel Beer
Rachel Beer
Rachel Beer was an Indian-born British newspaper editor. She was editor-in-chief of The Observer and The Sunday Times.-Biography:...

 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
Roy Thomson, 1st Baron Thomson of Fleet
Roy Herbert Thomson, 1st Baron Thomson of Fleet GBE was a Canadian newspaper proprietor and media entrepreneur.-Career:...

. In 1966 Thomson also acquired The Times and formed Times Newspapers Ltd to publish the two papers.

Rupert Murdoch
Rupert Murdoch
Keith Rupert Murdoch, AC, KSG is an Australian-American business magnate. He is the founder and Chairman and CEO of , the world's second-largest media conglomerate....

'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
The Sun (newspaper)
The Sun is a daily national tabloid newspaper published in the United Kingdom and owned by News Corporation. Sister editions are published in Glasgow and Dublin...

and the News of the World
News of the World
The News of the World was a national red top newspaper published in the United Kingdom from 1843 to 2011. It was at one time the biggest selling English language newspaper in the world, and at closure still had one of the highest English language circulations...

.

Almost a decade later News Corp would own the Fox Network
Fox Broadcasting Company
Fox Broadcasting Company, commonly referred to as Fox Network or simply Fox , is an American commercial broadcasting television network owned by Fox Entertainment Group, part of Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation. Launched on October 9, 1986, Fox was the highest-rated broadcast network in the...

. News International is the controlling shareholder of BSkyB
British Sky Broadcasting
British Sky Broadcasting Group plc is a satellite broadcasting, broadband and telephony services company headquartered in London, United Kingdom, with operations in the United Kingdom and the Ireland....

 and James Murdoch
James Murdoch (media executive)
James Rupert Jacob Murdoch is the younger son of media mogul Rupert Murdoch and currently serves as chairman and chief executive of News Corporation, Europe, and Asia, overseeing assets such as News International , SKY Italia , Sky Deutschland, and STAR TV .He sits on the News...

 is CEO.

Control by News Corporation ended the editorial reign of Harold Evans
Harold Evans
Sir Harold Matthew Evans is a British-born journalist and writer who was editor of The Sunday Times from 1967 to 1981. He has written various books on history and journalism...

, 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
Andrew Neil
Andrew Ferguson Neil is a Scottish journalist and broadcaster.He currently works for the BBC, presenting the live political programmes The Daily Politics and This Week...

's editorship in the 1980s and early 1990s, The Sunday Times took a strongly Thatcherite
Thatcherism
Thatcherism describes the conviction politics, economic and social policy, and political style of the British Conservative politician Margaret Thatcher, who was leader of her party from 1975 to 1990...

 and Wienerite
Martin Wiener
Martin Joel Wiener is an American academic and author. He is currently the chair of the history department at Rice University.- English Culture and the Decline of the Industrial Spirit: The Wiener Debate :...

 slant, and became particularly strongly associated with the view that anti-commercialism
Commercialism
Commercialism, in its original meaning, is the practices, methods, aims, and spirit of commerce or business. Today, however, it primarily refers to the tendency within open-market capitalism to turn everything into objects, images, and services sold for the purpose of generating profit...

 among those who traditionally voted for the Conservative Party
Conservative Party (UK)
The Conservative Party, formally the Conservative and Unionist Party, is a centre-right political party in the United Kingdom that adheres to the philosophies of conservatism and British unionism. It is the largest political party in the UK, and is currently the largest single party in the House...

 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
Peregrine Worsthorne
Sir Peregrine Gerard Worsthorne is a British journalist, writer and broadcaster. He was educated at Stowe School, Peterhouse, Cambridge and Magdalen College, Oxford. Worsthorne spent the largest part of his career at the Telegraph newspaper titles, eventually becoming editor of The Sunday Telegraph...

 at the rival Sunday Telegraph
Sunday Telegraph
The Sunday Telegraph is a British broadsheet newspaper, founded in February 1961. It is the sister paper of The Daily Telegraph, but is run separately with a different editorial staff, although there is some cross-usage of stories...

.

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
The Times
The Times is a British daily national newspaper, first published in London in 1785 under the title The Daily Universal Register . The Times and its sister paper The Sunday Times are published by Times Newspapers Limited, a subsidiary since 1981 of News International...

 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.

Major stories

It published the faked Hitler Diaries
Hitler Diaries
In April 1983, the West German news magazine Stern published excerpts from what purported to be the diaries of Adolf Hitler, known as the Hitler Diaries , which were subsequently revealed to be forgeries...

 (1983), believing them to be genuine. Other notable stories include:
  • The thalidomide
    Thalidomide
    Thalidomide was introduced as a sedative drug in the late 1950s that was typically used to cure morning sickness. In 1961, it was withdrawn due to teratogenicity and neuropathy. There is now a growing clinical interest in thalidomide, and it is introduced as an immunomodulatory agent used...

     scandal in the 1960s.
  • The paper sponsored Francis Chichester
    Francis Chichester
    Sir Francis Charles Chichester KBE , aviator and sailor, was knighted by Queen Elizabeth II for becoming the first person to sail single-handed around the world by the clipper route, and the fastest circumnavigator, in nine months and one day overall.-Early life:Chichester was born in Barnstaple,...

    's single-handed
    Single-handed sailing
    The sport of single-handed sailing or solo sailing is sailing with only one crewmember . The term is usually used with reference to ocean and long-distance sailing, and particularly competitive sailing....

     circumnavigation
    Circumnavigation
    Circumnavigation – literally, "navigation of a circumference" – refers to travelling all the way around an island, a continent, or the entire planet Earth.- Global circumnavigation :...

     of the world under sail in 1966–1967, and the Sunday Times Golden Globe Race
    Sunday Times Golden Globe Race
    The Sunday Times Golden Globe Race was a non-stop, single-handed, round-the-world yacht race, held in 1968–1969, and was the first round-the-world yacht race...

     in 1968–1969, both of which were sensational events in Britain.
  • Israeli Nuclear Weapons—using information from Mordechai Vanunu
    Mordechai Vanunu
    Mordechai Vanunu ; is a former Israeli nuclear technician who, citing his opposition to weapons of mass destruction, revealed details of Israel's nuclear weapons program to the British press in 1986. He was subsequently lured to Italy by a Mossad agent, where he was drugged and kidnapped by...

    , The Sunday Times in 1986 published information that said that Israel
    Israel
    The State of Israel is a parliamentary republic located in the Middle East, along the eastern shore of the Mediterranean Sea...

     had manufactured more than 100 nuclear
    Nuclear weapon
    A nuclear weapon is an explosive device that derives its destructive force from nuclear reactions, either fission or a combination of fission and fusion. Both reactions release vast quantities of energy from relatively small amounts of matter. The first fission bomb test released the same amount...

     warheads.
  • Uncaring Thatcher—The Sunday Times ran a story claiming that Queen Elizabeth II
    Elizabeth II of the United Kingdom
    Elizabeth II is the constitutional monarch of 16 sovereign states known as the Commonwealth realms: the United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Jamaica, Barbados, the Bahamas, Grenada, Papua New Guinea, the Solomon Islands, Tuvalu, Saint Lucia, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, Belize,...

     was upset with the style of Margaret Thatcher
    Margaret Thatcher
    Margaret Hilda Thatcher, Baroness Thatcher, was Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 1979 to 1990...

    's leadership. This was notable as the monarch generally maintains a strictly impartial role politically
  • The "cash-for-questions" investigation under John Major
    John Major
    Sir John Major, is a British Conservative politician, who served as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom and Leader of the Conservative Party from 1990–1997...

    's government.
  • On 12 July 1987 The Sunday Times began serialisation of the book Spycatcher
    Spycatcher
    Spycatcher: The Candid Autobiography of a Senior Intelligence Officer , is a book written by Peter Wright, former MI5 officer and Assistant Director, and co-author Paul Greengrass. It was published first in Australia...

    , the memoirs of an MI5
    MI5
    The Security Service, commonly known as MI5 , is the United Kingdom's internal counter-intelligence and security agency and is part of its core intelligence machinery alongside the Secret Intelligence Service focused on foreign threats, Government Communications Headquarters and the Defence...

     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
    European Court of Human Rights
    The European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg is a supra-national court established by the European Convention on Human Rights and hears complaints that a contracting state has violated the human rights enshrined in the Convention and its protocols. Complaints can be brought by individuals or...

     in 1991.
  • 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
    HIV/AIDS in Africa
    HIV/AIDS is a major public health concern and cause of death in Africa. Although Africa is home to about 14.5% of the world's population, it is estimated to be home to 67% of all people living with HIV and to 72% of all AIDS deaths in 2009.-Overview:...

     a myth. In response, the scientific journal Nature
    Nature (journal)
    Nature, first published on 4 November 1869, is ranked the world's most cited interdisciplinary scientific journal by the Science Edition of the 2010 Journal Citation Reports...

    described the paper's coverage of HIV/AIDS as "seriously mistaken, and probably disastrous." 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."


The Sunday Times publishes The Sunday Times Rich List
Sunday Times Rich List
The Sunday Times Rich List is a list of the 1,000 wealthiest people or families in the United Kingdom, updated annually in April and published as a magazine supplement by British national Sunday newspaper The Sunday Times since 1989...

, an annual survey of the wealthiest people in Britain and Ireland, equivalent to the Forbes 400
Forbes 400
The Forbes 400 or 400 Richest Americans is a list published by Forbes Magazine magazine of the wealthiest 400 Americans, ranked by net worth. The list is published annually in September, and 2010 marks the 29th issue. The 400 was started by Malcom Forbes in 1982 and treats those in the list like...

 list in the USA, and a series of league tables with reviews of private British companies, in particular the Sunday Times Fast Track 100
Sunday Times Fast Track 100
A list published annually in December in partnership with The Sunday Times newspaper in the UK.The list ranks Britain's fastest growing privately held companies by sales growth over the last 3 years....

. The paper also publishes an annual league table
League tables of British universities
Rankings of universities in the United Kingdom are published annually by The Guardian, The Independent, The Sunday Times and The Times...

 of British universities
British universities
Universities in the United Kingdom have generally been instituted by Royal Charter, Papal Bull, Act of Parliament or an instrument of government under the Education Reform Act 1988; in any case generally with the approval of the Privy Council, and only such recognised bodies can award degrees of...

 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
The Sunday Times 100 Best Companies to Work For
Since 2001, the Sunday Times newspaper has published annual lists of the best companies to work for in the UK. The award is highly valued by its winners.The list ranks Britain's best companies to work for based a number of criteria...

", focusing on UK companies.

Irish edition

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
Eoghan Harris
Eoghan Harris is an Irish journalist, fiction writer, director, columnist and politician. He currently writes for the Sunday Independent. He was a member of Seanad Éireann from 2007–11, having been nominated by the Taoiseach, Bertie Ahern....

, and the inclusion of Irish cinema listings and schedules for RTÉ One
RTÉ One
RTÉ One is the flagship television channel of Raidió Teilifís Éireann , and it is the most popular and most watched television channel in Ireland. It was launched as Telefís Éireann on 31 December 1961, it was renamed RTÉ Television in 1966, and it was renamed as RTÉ One upon the launch of RTÉ...

 and RTÉ Two
RTÉ Two
RTÉ Two is a free-to-air general entertainment channel operated by Irish state broadcaster Raidió Teilifís Éireann. RTÉ Two is available throughout the island of Ireland through digital terrestrial service Saorview, VHF and UHF bands, and is also available via satellite to Irish subscribers of...

 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
The Irish Times
The Irish Times is an Irish daily broadsheet newspaper launched on 29 March 1859. The editor is Kevin O'Sullivan who succeeded Geraldine Kennedy in 2011; the deputy editor is Paul O'Neill. The Irish Times is considered to be Ireland's newspaper of record, and is published every day except Sundays...

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

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

1821: Henry White
1822: Daniel Whittle Harvey
Daniel Whittle Harvey
Daniel Whittle Harvey was a Radical English politician who founded The Sunday Times newspaper and was the first Commissioner of the City of London Police....

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
Joseph Hatton
Joseph Paul Christopher Hatton was a novelist and journalist. He was the editor of The Sunday Times from1874 to 1881.- Life :...

1881: Neville Bruce
1887: Phil Robinson
1890: Arthur William à Beckett
Arthur William a Beckett
Arthur William à Beckett was an English journalist and man of letters.-Biography:He was a younger son of Gilbert Abbott à Beckett, brother of Gilbert Arthur à Beckett and educated at Felsted School...

1893: Rachel Beer
Rachel Beer
Rachel Beer was an Indian-born British newspaper editor. She was editor-in-chief of The Observer and The Sunday Times.-Biography:...

1901: Leonard Rees
1932: William W. Hadley
1950: Harry Hodson
Harry Hodson
Henry Vincent "Harry" Hodson was a British economist and editor.-Career:Hodson was born in Edmonton, London. He was educated at Gresham's School, Holt, and Balliol College, Oxford, becoming a Fellow of All Souls College, Oxford, in 1928. He was later a member of the Economic Advisory Council and...

1961: Denis Hamilton
Denis Hamilton
Charles Denis "C.D." Hamilton was an English newspaper editor.He was born in South Shields, County Durham, England, the son of an engineer from the Acklam iron and steel works who had retired early for health reasons. He joined the Boy Scouts and attained the rank of Eagle Scout...

1967: Harold Evans
Harold Evans
Sir Harold Matthew Evans is a British-born journalist and writer who was editor of The Sunday Times from 1967 to 1981. He has written various books on history and journalism...

1981: Frank Giles
Frank Giles
Frank T.R. Giles was editor of the British Sunday Times newspaper from 1981–83, having served as deputy editor under his predecessor Harold Evans.-Bibliography:* Frank Giles: Sundry Times. London, Murray, 1986. ISBN 0719542898...

1983: Andrew Neil
Andrew Neil
Andrew Ferguson Neil is a Scottish journalist and broadcaster.He currently works for the BBC, presenting the live political programmes The Daily Politics and This Week...

1995: John Witherow
John Witherow
John Witherow is a journalist, who is the editor of the Sunday Times.He migrated to Britain in the late 1950s and later attended Bedford School and the University of York....


See also

  • Funday Times
    Funday Times
    The Funday Times was a section of the UK Sunday Times. It was intended mainly for children, and included several comics, including Dennis and Gnasher, Rex and Tex, Beryl the Peril, Fans Utd., Scooby Doo, Space Raoul, The Powerpuff Girls, Creature Feature, Newton's Law, Jarvis, Squirt, The...

  • Mrs. Mills Solves all Your Problems
    Mrs. Mills Solves all Your Problems
    Mrs Mills Solves All Your Problems is a popular, satirical and fictional agony aunt column in the Sunday Times Style magazine, in which readers write or email Mrs Mills and she replies with exceptionally...

  • Sunday Times Fast Track 100
    Sunday Times Fast Track 100
    A list published annually in December in partnership with The Sunday Times newspaper in the UK.The list ranks Britain's fastest growing privately held companies by sales growth over the last 3 years....

  • The Sunday Times Magazine
    The Sunday Times Magazine
    The Sunday Times Magazine is a supplement to The Sunday Times newspaper. It was launched in 1962 and was redesigned in November 2008.-References:...

  • The Sunday Times Motorshow Live

External links

The source of this article is wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.  The text of this article is licensed under the GFDL.
 
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