Excited about a printed newspaper
August 17, 2008 by grzegorz.piechota
They describe him as an “old school” that “doesn’t hang around on TV … You can’t get him to go out for lunch after Wednesday. He is a very, very involved editor.”
The Sunday Times editor John Witherow gave the first major interview in nine years to the Guardian’s Jane Martinson. Witherow has been editing the newspaper since 1994 and is News Corp’s longest-serving editor. The newspaper has gone through re-design recently.
- Witherow on change: ”Life only becomes dull if you don’t change it. And these changes have been really invigorating.”
- About his belief that the circulation of the printed paper can still rise: “It’s much tougher now but it’s still possible.” [Encouraged by the reaction to the new design, he has plans to relaunch the main magazine and Culture later this year, as well as offering Sunday-only promotions. The seven-week campaign is to be followed by more advertising over the coming months.] ”Newsprint still has the same elemental excitement about it – don’t you think that?” [Witherow is boyishly enthusiastic about the "tactile" joy of a Sunday read and wonders jokily whether the environmental damage of reading his newspaper online is greater than printing all that paper.]
- About an integration of online and print newsrooms: [When Martinson compared his stance against online intergration with King Canute fighting against the elements, Witherow answered:] ”I wouldn’t use that. King Canute didn’t stop the waves.”
- On News Corp.’s European boss James Murdoch belief in newspaper business: “He intuitively believes in newspapers and thinks they can be successful. He believes that all titles should aim to expand their circulation and, while everybody else is talking about managing decline and the migration to the web, that is really exciting.”
- About weekly calls from Rupert Murdoch, a proprietor: “It is amazing he’s still doing it. But he remains incredibly curious and very interested in newspapers. [Does Murdoch suggest what the paper should be covering?] No … he just likes to know what’s going on. The conversation is invariably about world economics.”
John Witherow is 56 years old. He started his career in 1977 as a Reuters trainee. Moved to the Times in 1980 and served as a home, foreign correspondent. He became a defence correspondent at the Sunday Times in 1984. In 1987 he became a focus editor, in 1989 a foreign editor and in 1992 a managing editor responsible for news.
He famously used to read every word of the enormous newspaper before it went to print. “I tried to do it for a few years and went cross-eyed,” he admitted to the Guardian. “It drove me bonkers, not because of the content but just demands of time.” Now he signs off every front cover and reads three main news sections before publication.
Tagged: Case studies, design, Marketing, newspaper, publisher
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