The Times

The Times was the first newspaper to bear that name, inspiring numerous other papers around the world. In countries where these other titles are popular, it has been referred to as The London Times or The Times of London, although the newspaper is of national scope and distribution.

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. They also have 640,000 digital-only paid subscribers as of June 2025, with the number rising to 740,000 when including physical circulation paid subscribers. In the year June 2024 to June 2025, Times Media, the parent company of The Times and Sunday Times newspapers saw pre-tax profits rise +13% to £69.2 million ($92.7 million), operating profits of £73.3 million ($102.2 million) and revenues rising +2% to £390.7 million ($523.5 million). An American edition of The Times has been published since 6 June 2006 with it mainly being circulated in the New York City and Washington, D.C. metro areas. A complete historical file of the digitised paper, up to 2019, is available online from Gale Cengage Learning. The Times and The Sunday Times launched their own radio station, Times Radio, in 2020; its shows cover news and politics, both nationally and internationally, and had an average weekly reach of 604,000 listeners at the end of 2024.

History

1785 to 1890

The Times was founded by John Walter (1738–1812) on 1 January 1785 as The Daily Universal Register, with Walter in the role of editor. Walter had lost his job by the end of 1784 after the insurance company for which he worked went bankrupt due to losses from a Jamaican hurricane. Unemployed, Walter began a new business venture. At that time, Henry Johnson invented logography, a typesetting system that promised to be faster and more accurate by including sorts for common words and groups of letters (although three years later, it was proved less efficient than advertised); Walter bought the patent and opened a printing house to produce books by this method. The first publication of The Daily Universal Register was on 1 January 1785. Walter changed the title after 940 editions on 1 January 1788 to The Times. In 1803 Walter handed ownership and editorship to his son John. The senior Walter's pioneering efforts to obtain continental news, especially from France, helped to build the paper's reputation among policymakers and financiers, in spite of a sixteen-month incarceration in Newgate Prison for libels printed in The Times.

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. Beginning in 1814, the paper was printed on the new steam-driven cylinder press developed by Friedrich Koenig (1774–1833). In 1815, The Times had a circulation of 5,000. It had grown to 9,800 by 1837 and was 51,200 in 1854.

Thomas Barnes was appointed general editor in 1817. In the same year, the paper's printer, James Lawson, died and passed the business onto his son, John Joseph Lawson (1802–1852). Under the editorship of 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 were 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.

The Times was one of the first newspapers to send war correspondents to cover particular conflicts. William Howard Russell, the paper's correspondent with the army in the Crimean War, was immensely influential with his dispatches back to England.

1890 to 1981

The Times faced financial failure 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 the 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 the Great War. On 8 May 1920, also under the editorship of Steed, The Times, in an editorial, endorsed the antisemitic fabrication 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?"

The following year, when Philip Graves, The Times' correspondent for Constantinople (modern Istanbul), 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; the editor Geoffrey Dawson was closely allied with government supporters of appeasement, most notably Neville Chamberlain. Candid news reports by Norman Ebbut from Berlin that warned of Nazi warmongering were rewritten in London to support the appeasement policy.

Kim Philby, a double agent with primary allegiance to the Soviet Union, 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 British Military Intelligence (MI6) during the Second World War, was promoted into senior positions after the war ended, and defected to the Soviet Union when discovery was inevitable in 1963.

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. In December 1944, when fighting broke out in Athens between the Greek Communist ELAS and the British Army, Carr in a Times leader sided with the Communists, leading Winston Churchill to condemn him and the article in a speech to the House of Commons. As a result of Carr's editorial, The Times became popularly known during that stage of the Second World War as "the threepenny Daily Worker" (the price of the Communist Party's Daily Worker being one penny).

On 3 May 1966 it resumed printing news on the front page; previously, the front page had been given over to small advertisements, usually of interest to the moneyed classes in British society. Also in 1966, the Royal Arms, which had been a feature of the newspaper's masthead since its inception, was abandoned. In the same year, members of the Astor family sold the paper to the Canadian publishing magnate Roy Thomson. His Thomson Corporation brought it under the same ownership as The Sunday Times to form Times Newspapers Limited.

An industrial dispute prompted the management to shut down the paper for nearly a year, from 1 December 1978 to 12 November 1979.

The Thomson Corporation management was struggling to run the business due to the 1979 energy crisis and union demands. Management sought a buyer who was in a position to guarantee the survival of both titles, 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: the Australian business magnate Rupert Murdoch. Robert Holmes à Court, another Australian magnate, had previously tried to buy The Times in 1980.

From 1981

In 1981 The Times and The Sunday Times were bought from Thomson by Murdoch's News International. The acquisition followed three weeks of intensive bargaining with the unions by the company negotiators John Collier and Bill O'Neill. Murdoch gave legal undertakings to maintain separate journalism resources for the two titles. The Royal Arms were reintroduced to the masthead at about this time, but whereas previously it had been that of the reigning monarch, it would now be that of the House of Hanover, who were on the throne when the newspaper was founded.

After 14 years as editor, William Rees-Mogg resigned upon completion of the change of ownership. Murdoch began to make his mark on the paper by appointing Harold Evans as his replacement. One of his most important changes was the introduction of new technology and efficiency measures. Between March 1981 and 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 photocomposition. The Times and the Sunday Times were able to reduce their print room staff by half as a result. 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.

Robert Fisk, seven times British International Journalist of the Year, 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.

In June 1990 The Times ceased its policy of using courtesy titles ("Mr", "Mrs" or "Miss" prefixes) for living persons before full names on the first reference, but it continues to use them before surnames on subsequent references. In 1992 it accepted the use of "Ms" for unmarried women "if they express a preference."

In November 2003 News International began producing the newspaper in both broadsheet and tabloid sizes. Over the next year, the broadsheet edition was withdrawn from Northern Ireland, Scotland and the English West Country. Since 1 November 2004 the paper has been printed solely in tabloid format.

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. According to its leading article "From Our Own Correspondents", the reason for the removal of full postal addresses was 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.

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

On 26 July 2012, to coincide with the official start of the London 2012 Olympics and the issuing of a series of souvenir front covers, The Times added the suffix "of London" to its masthead.

In March 2016 the paper dropped its rolling digital coverage for a series of "editions" of the paper at 9am, midday, and 5pm on weekdays. The change also saw a redesign of the paper's app for smartphones and tablets.

In April 2018 the Independent Press Standards Organisation (IPSO) upheld a complaint against The Times for its report of a court hearing in a Tower Hamlets fostering case.

In April 2019 culture secretary Jeremy Wright said he was minded to allow a request by News UK to relax the legal undertakings given in 1981 to maintain separate journalism resources for The Times and The Sunday Times.

In 2019 IPSO upheld complaints against The Times over their article "GPS data shows container visited trafficking hotspot", and for three articles as part of a series on pollution in Britain's waterways: "No river safe for bathing", "Filthy Business" and "Behind the story". IPSO also upheld complaints in 2019 against articles headlined "Funding secret of scientists against hunt trophy ban," and "Britons lose out to rush of foreign medical students."

In 2019 The Times published an article about Imam Abdullah Patel that wrongly claimed Patel had blamed Israel for the 2003 murder of a British police officer by a terror suspect in Manchester. The story also wrongly claimed that Patel ran a primary school that had been criticised by Ofsted for segregating parents at events, which Ofsted said was contrary to "British democratic principles". The Times settled Patel's defamation claim by issuing an apology and offering to pay damages and legal costs. Patel's solicitor, Zillur Rahman, said the case "highlights the shocking level of journalism to which the Muslim community are often subject".

In 2019 The Times published an article titled "Female Circumcision is like clipping a nail, claimed speaker". The article featured a photo of Sultan Choudhury beside the headline, leading some readers to incorrectly infer that Choudhury had made the comment. Choudhury lodged a complaint with IPSO and sued The Times for libel. In 2020 The Times issued an apology, amended its article, and agreed to pay Choudhury damages and legal costs. Choudhury's solicitor, Nishtar Saleem, said, "This is another example of irresponsible journalism. Publishing sensational excerpts on a 'free site' while concealing the full article behind a paywall is a dangerous game".

In December 2020 the human rights advocacy group Cage and Moazzam Begg, a former prisoner at Guantanamo Bay detention camp, received damages of £30,000 plus costs in a libel case they had brought against The Times. In June 2020 a report in The Times suggested that Cage and Begg were supporting a man who had been arrested in relation to a knife attack in Reading, Berkshire, in which three men were murdered. The Times report also suggested that Cage and Begg were excusing the actions of the accused man by mentioning mistakes made by the police and others. In addition to paying damages, The Times printed an apology. Cage stated that the damages amount would be used to "expose state-sponsored Islamophobia and those complicit with it in the press. ... The Murdoch press empire has actively supported xenophobic elements and undermined principles of open society and accountability. ... We will continue to shine a light on war criminals and torture apologists and press barons who fan the flames of hate".

The Times was forced to correct a false article in January 2025 about electric vehicle (EV) sales, following successful complaint to IPSO.

On 28 October 2025 The Times published an article falsely claiming to feature quotes from the former mayor of New York City Bill de Blasio regarding the mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani; the article was deleted two hours after publication. The actual interviewee was later revealed to be Bill DeBlasio, a wine importer living in Huntington Station, New York. DeBlasio used ChatGPT to generate a response to the reporter's initial email, and received an interview through his home's Ring doorbell. On 30 October The Nation magazine published an article by the former mayor de Blasio about the incident, stating that he gave the reporter some credit for apologising to him directly, but expressing concern about the state of journalism "in a hyper-partisan era when standards of objectivity and decency are decaying week by week".

Amnesty International report

In May 2026, a report by Amnesty International found that The Times – along with other major dailies, The Daily Telegraph, The Guardian, and The Sun – had significantly amplified the British anti-transgender movement. Coverage from late-2010s onwards became increasingly negative, depicting transgender people as "involved in controversy, demanding or aggressive and with a propensity to be offended", their analysis found. According to Amnesty's research, transgender voices were largely absent from the reporting, while the impact of anti-trans figures and groups was magnified. The report concludes that a concerted, years-long campaign was waged to influence the media, in order to manufacture anti-transgender sentiment.