Revolution at the Daily Telegraph

With its move to full colour complete, the UK Daily Telegraph is enjoying a “new golden age”, according to its editor-in-chief Will Lewis. But the revolution has been brutal – and staff could yet strike.

Two articles – by the Independent’s Ian Burrell and by the Guardian’s Stephen Brook – give a summary of recent changes at the best read quality daily newspaper in the United Kingdom.

A group once seen as gentlemanly and old-fashioned is leading now the way into the digital era. While the latest circulation figures show a year-on-year decline of the daily title by 3% to 887,664 in August, unique users to Telegraph.co.uk have more than doubled to 18,746,025 over the past year. The reason is that the website attracted many users abroad.

Here is an interactive timeline of the changes since the Barclay brothers bought the Daily and Sunday Telegraph titles and the Spectator for £665m in June 2004 (spotted at the Guardian website):

Some quotes from Will Lewis:

On the revolution he started: “In essence, what we have done is put a group of highly talented journalists in a room and asked them to get on with it. We have provided the means for them to express themselves in paper, online, down a mobile phone and in distribution outlets that we haven’t yet announced. That is now working brilliantly. We are a united operation in a way that I haven’t experienced before in newspapers.”

Answering to complaints that the Telegraph is now one of the unhappiest newsrooms in Fleet Street: “I will concede it’s not Disneyland. It’s a tough place to work. Our people are very, very demanding of each other and they set very high standards. I will say this, if you can do it here, you can do it anywhere. This is probably the most demanding place to work in Fleet Street, I will admit that.”

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