Frontpage of The Daily Telegraph on 12 May 2010, the day after David Cameron became the British Prime Minister. |
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| Type | Daily newspaper |
| Format | Broadsheet |
| Owner | Telegraph Media Group |
| Editor | Tony Gallagher |
| Founded | 1855 |
| Political alignment | Centre-Right, conservative[1] |
| Headquarters | 111 Buckingham Palace Road, London, SW1W 0DT |
| Circulation | 634,113 (July 2011)[2] |
| ISSN | 0307-1235 |
| OCLC number | 49632006 |
| Official website | telegraph.co.uk |
The Daily Telegraph is a daily morning broadsheet newspaper distributed throughout the United Kingdom and internationally. The newspaper was founded by Arthur B. Sleigh in June 1855 as the Daily Telegraph and Courier, and is since 2004 owned by David and Frederick Barclay.
According to a MORI survey conducted in 2005, 64% of Telegraph readers intended to support the Conservative Party in the coming elections.[3] It had an average daily circulation of 634,113 in July 2011 (compared to 441,205 for The Times).[2]
It is the sister paper of The Sunday Telegraph. It is run separately with a different editorial staff, but there is some cross-usage of stories.
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The Daily Telegraph and Courier was founded by Colonel Arthur B. Sleigh in June 1855 to air a personal grievance against the future Commander-in-chief of the British Army, Prince George, Duke of Cambridge.[1][4] Joseph Moses Levy, the owner of The Sunday Times, agreed to print the newspaper, and the first edition was published on 29 June 1855. The paper cost 2d and was four pages long.[1] It was not a success, however, and Sleigh was unable to pay Levy the printing bill.[4] Levy took over the newspaper, his aim being to produce a cheaper newspaper than his main competitors in London, the Daily News and The Morning Post, to expand the size of the overall market.
Levy then appointed his son, Edward Levy-Lawson, and Thornton Leigh Hunt to edit the newspaper, and relaunched it as The Daily Telegraph, with the slogan "the largest, best, and cheapest newspaper in the world".[5] Hunt laid out the newspaper's principles in a memorandum sent to Levy: "We should report all striking events in science, so told that the intelligent public can understand what has happened and can see its bearing on our daily life and our future. The same principle should apply to all other events—to fashion, to new inventions, to new methods of conducting business".[6]
In 1876 Jules Verne published his novel Michael Strogoff, whose plot takes place during a fictional uprising and war in Siberia. Verne included among the book's characters a war correspondent of The Daily Telegraph, named Harry Blount—who is depicted as an exceptionally dedicated, resourceful and brave journalist, taking great personal risks in order to follow closely the ongoing war and bring accurate news of it to the Telegraph's readership, ahead of competing papers.[7]
In 1908, Kaiser Wilhelm II of Germany gave a controversial interview to The Daily Telegraph that severely damaged Anglo-German relations and added to international tensions in the build-up to World War I.[8]
In 1928 the son of the 1st Baron Burnham sold it to the 1st Viscount Camrose, in partnership with his brother Viscount Kemsley and the 1st Baron Iliffe. Both the Camrose (Berry) and Burnham (Levy-Lawson) families remained involved in management until Conrad Black took control in 1986.
In 1937 the newspaper absorbed The Morning Post which traditionally espoused a conservative position and sold predominantly amongst the retired officer class. Originally William Ewart Berry, 1st Viscount Camrose, bought The Morning Post with the intention of publishing it alongside the Daily Telegraph, but poor sales of the former led him to merge the two. For some years the paper was retitled The Daily Telegraph and Morning Post before it reverted to just The Daily Telegraph. In the late 1930s, Victor Gordon Lennox, the Telegraph's diplomatic editor published an anti-appeasement private newspaper The Whitehall Letter that received much of its information from leaks from Sir Robert Vansittart, the Permanent Under-Secretary of the Foreign Office and Reginald "Rex" Leeper, the Foreign Office's Press Secretary[9] As an result, Gordon Lennox was monitored by MI5[9]
In November 1940, with Fleet Street subjected to almost daily bombing raids by the Luftwaffe, the Telegraph started printing in Manchester at Kemsley House, which was run by Camrose's brother Kemsley. Manchester quite often printed the entire run of the Telegraph when its Fleet Street offices were under threat. The name Kemsley House was changed to Thomson House in 1959. In 1986 printing of Northern editions of the Daily and Sunday Telegraph moved to Trafford Park and in 2008 to Newsprinters at Knowsley, Liverpool.
During the Second World War, The Daily Telegraph covertly helped in the recruitment of code-breakers for Bletchley Park. The ability to solve The Telegraph's crossword in under 12 minutes was considered a recruitment test. The newspaper was asked to organise a crossword competition, after which each of the successful participants was contacted and asked if they would be prepared to undertake "a particular type of work as a contribution to the war effort". The competition itself was won by F H W Hawes of Dagenham who finished the crossword in less than eight minutes.[10]
The Daily Telegraph is owned by the Barclay brothers. Until January 2004, the newspaper group was controlled by Canadian businessman Conrad Black. Black, through his holding company Ravelston Corporation, owned Hollinger Inc. which in turn owns 30% of Hollinger International and, under a deal masterminded by Andrew Knight through which Black bought the newspaper group in 1986, owns 78% of the voting rights. Hollinger Inc. also owned the Chicago Sun-Times, the Jerusalem Post, and conservative publications such as The Spectator.
On 18 January 2004, Black was dismissed as chairman of the Hollinger International board over allegations of financial wrongdoing. Black was also sued by the company. Later that day it was reported that the Barclay brothers had agreed to purchase Hollinger Inc. from Black, giving them the controlling interest in the newspaper group. They then launched a takeover bid for the rest of the group, valuing the company at £200m. However, a suit has been filed by the Hollinger International board with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission to try to block Black selling shares in the company until an investigation into his dealings have been completed. Black filed a counter-suit but eventually United States judge Leo Strine sided with the Hollinger International board and blocked Black from selling his Hollinger Inc. shares and interests to the twins. On Sunday 7 March, the twins announced they were launching another takeover bid, this time just for the Daily Telegraph and its Sunday sister paper rather than the whole stable. Current owner of the Daily Express, Richard Desmond, was also interested in purchasing the paper, selling his interest in several pornographic magazines to finance the initiative. Desmond withdrew in March 2004 when the price climbed above £600m, as did Daily Mail and General Trust plc on 17 June.
Eventually, the Barclay brothers purchased Hollinger, and with it the Telegraph, for around £665m in late June 2004.
Amidst the unravelling of the takeover Sir David Barclay suggested that The Daily Telegraph might in the future no longer be the "house newspaper" of the Conservatives. In an interview with The Guardian he said, "Where the government are right we shall support them."
The editorial board endorsed the Conservative party in the 2005 general election.
15 November 2004 saw the tenth anniversary of the launch of the Telegraph's website Electronic Telegraph. Now re-launched as telegraph.co.uk, the website was the UK's first national newspaper online. Monday 8 May 2006 saw the first stage of a major redesign of the Telegraph's website, based on a wider page layout and greater prominence for audio, video and journalist blogs.
On 10 October 2005, the Daily Telegraph relaunched to incorporate a tabloid sports section and a new standalone business section. The Daily Mail's star columnist and political analyst Simon Heffer left that paper in October 2005 to rejoin the Daily Telegraph, where he has become associate editor. Heffer, known for his combative style and wit, has written two columns a week for the Telegraph since late October 2005 and is a regular contributor to the news podcast.
November, 2005 – launches the first regular podcast service by a newspaper in the UK.[11]
Just before Christmas 2005, it was announced that the Telegraph titles will be moving from Canada Place in Canary Wharf, to Victoria Plaza near Victoria Station in central London.[12] The new office features a 'hub and spoke' layout for the newsroom, which will produce content for print and online editions.
In October 2006, with its relocation to Buckingham Palace Road, Victoria, the Telegraph rebranded itself the Telegraph Media Group, repositioning itself as a multimedia company.
On 2 September 2008 the Daily Telegraph was printed with colour on each page for the first time when it left Westferry for Newsprinters at Broxbourne, Hertfordshire, another arm of the Murdoch (Rupert Murdoch) company.[13] The paper is also printed in Liverpool and Glasgow by Newsprinters.
In May 2009 the daily and Sunday editions published details of MPs' expenses. This led to a number of high-profile resignations from both the ruling Labour administration and the Conservative opposition.
The Daily Telegraph has been politically conservative in modern times.[14] The personal links between the paper's editors and the leadership of the Conservative Party, along with the paper's influence over Conservative activists, has resulted in the paper commonly being referred to, especially in Private Eye, as the Torygraph.[14] Even when Conservative support was shown to have slumped in the opinion polls and Labour became ascendant in them (particularly when leader Tony Blair rebranded the party as "New Labour" on becoming leader after the death of John Smith in 1994), the newspaper remained loyal to the Conservatives. This loyalty continued after Labour ousted the Conservatives from power by a landslide election result in 1997, and in the face of Labour election wins in 2001 and the third successive Labour election win in 2005.
The Daily Telegraph's sister Sunday paper was founded in 1961. The writer Sir Peregrine Worsthorne is probably the best known journalist associated with the title (1961–97), eventually being editor for three years from 1986. In 1989 the Sunday title was briefly merged in to a seven-day operation under Max Hastings's overall control. In 2005 the paper was revamped, a glossy fashion magazine being added to the more traditional review section. It costs £2.00 and includes separate Money, Home and Living, Sport, Travel and Business supplements. Circulation of The Sunday Telegraph in July 2010 was 505,214 (ABC)
The Young Telegraph was a weekly section of The Daily Telegraph published as a 14-page supplement in the weekend edition of the newspaper. The Young Telegraph featured a mixture of news, features, cartoon strips and product reviews aimed at 8–12 year olds. It was edited by Damien Kelleher (1993–97) and Kitty Melrose (1997–1999). Launched in 1990, the award-winning supplement also ran original serialised stories featuring popular brands such as Young Indiana Jones and the British children's sitcom Maid Marian and her Merry Men. In 1995, an interactive spin-off called Electronic Young Telegraph was launched on floppy disk. Described as an interactive computer magazine for children, Electronic Young Telegraph was edited by Adam Tanswell, who led the re-launch of the product on CD-Rom in 1998.[15] Electronic Young Telegraph featured original content including interactive quizzes, informative features and computer games, as well as entertainment news and reviews. It was later re-branded as T:Drive in 1999.
Telegraph.co.uk is the online version of the newspaper. It includes articles from the print editions of The Daily Telegraph and The Sunday Telegraph, as well as web-only content such as breaking news, features, picture galleries and blogs. It was named UK Consumer Website of the Year in 2007[16] and Digital Publisher of the year in 2009[17] by the Association of Online Publishers.[18]
The site is overseen by Edward Roussel, digital editor of Telegraph Media Group, and Marcus Warren as editor. Other staff include Shane Richmond, head of technology (editorial),[19] Ian Douglas, head of digital production[20] and Chei Amlani, online sport editor.
The site, which has been the focus of the group's efforts to create an integrated news operation producing content for print and online from the same newsroom, completed a relaunch during 2008 involving the use of the Escenic content management system, popular among northern European and Scandinavian newspaper groups.
Telegraph TV is an Online Video on Demand Television service run by The Daily Telegraph and the Sunday Telegraph. It is hosted on The Telegraph's official website, telegraph.co.uk.
Telegraph.co.uk became the most popular UK newspaper site in April 2008.[21] It was overtaken by Guardian.co.uk in April 2009 and later by "Mail Online".[22] "Telegraph.co.uk" is now the third most visited British newspaper website with 1.7 million daily browsers compared to 2.3 million for "Guardian.co.uk" and nearly 3 million for "Mail Online".[23]
8% of the Telegraph's traffic comes from social media sites,[24] much more than for any other site.[25] Part of this is down to its success with the Digg widget.[26]
The website was launched, under the name electronic telegraph at midday on 15 November 1994 at the headquarters of The Daily Telegraph at Canary Wharf in London Docklands. It was Europe's first daily web-based newspaper.
Initially the site published only the top stories from the print edition of the newspaper but it gradually increased its coverage until virtually all of the newspaper was carried online and the website was also publishing original material.
The website, hosted on a Sun Microsystems Sparc 20 server and connected via a 64 kbit/s leased line from Demon Internet, was edited by Ben Rooney. Key personnel behind the launch of the site were Matthew Doull and Saul Klein and the then marketing manager of The Daily Telegraph, Hugo Drayton, and the webmaster Fiona Carter. Drayton later became managing director of the newspaper.
An early coup for the site was the publication of articles by Ambrose Evans-Pritchard on Bill Clinton and the Whitewater controversy. The availability of the articles online brought a large American audience to the site. In 1997, the Clinton administration issued a 331-page report that accused Evans-Pritchard of peddling "right-wing inventions". Derek Bishton, who by then had succeeded Rooney as editor, later wrote: "In the days before ET it would have been highly unlikely that anyone in the US would have been aware of Evans-Pritchard's work – and certainly not to the extent that the White House would be forced to issue such a lengthy rebuttal."[27]
Bishton, who is now consulting editor for Telegraph Media Group, was followed as editor by Richard Burton, who was made redundant in August 2006. Edward Roussel replaced Burton.
My Telegraph offers a platform for readers to have their own blog, save articles, and network with other readers. Launched in May 2007, My Telegraph won a Cross Media Award from international newspaper organisation Ifra in October 2007.[28] One of the judges, Robert Cauthorn, described the project as "the best deployment of blogging yet seen in any newspaper anywhere in the world".
In May 2009 the daily and Sunday editions published details of MPs' expenses. This led to a number of high-profile resignations from both the ruling Labour administration and the Conservative opposition.
In December 2010 Telegraph reporters posing as constituents secretly recorded Business Secretary Vince Cable. In an undisclosed part of the transcript given to the BBC's Robert Peston by a whistleblower unhappy that the Telegraph had not published Cable's comments in full, Cable stated in reference to Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation takeover bid for BSkyB, "I have declared war on Mr Murdoch and I think we are going to win."[29] Following this revelation Cable had his responsibility for media affairs – including ruling on Murdoch's takeover plans – withdrawn from his role as business secretary.[30] In May 2011 the Press Complaints Commission upheld a complaint regarding the Telegraph's use of subterfuge: "On this occasion, the commission was not convinced that the public interest was such as to justify proportionately this level of subterfuge."[31] In July 2011 a firm of private investigators hired by the Telegraph to track the source of the leak concluded "strong suspicion" that two former Telegraph employees who had moved to News International, one of them Will Lewis, had gained access to the transcript and audio files and leaked them to Peston.[32]
The Daily Telegraph has published at least five premature obituaries:
On Wednesday, 24 February 1988, The Daily Telegraph was printed with the wrong date: Thursday 25 February was printed by mistake. This caused complaints from confused readers, but also inspired the first front page cartoon by Matt Pritchett, who now has a cartoon on the front page of the Telegraph almost every day. The cartoon had the caption: "I hope I have a better Thursday than I did yesterday".
At the 2010 British Press Awards The Telegraph was named the "National Newspaper of the Year" for its coverage of the MPs expenses scandal (named "Scoop of the Year"), with William Lewis winning "Journalist of the Year".[36] The Telegraph won "Team of the Year" in 2004 for its coverage of the Iraq War.[36] The paper also won "Columnist of the Year" three years' running from 2002 to 2004: Zoë Heller (2002), Robert Harris (2003) and Boris Johnson (2004).[36]
In 1979, following a letter in the Daily Telegraph and a Government report highlighting the shortfall in care available for premature babies, Bliss, the special care baby charity was founded. In 2009, as part of the Bliss' 30th birthday celebrations, the charity was chosen as one of four beneficiaries of the newspaper's Christmas Charity Appeal. In February 2010 a cheque was presented to Bliss for £120,000.
The newspaper runs a charity appeal every Christmas, choosing different charities each year. In 2009, £1.2 million was raised.
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