The Thunderer enjoys greater status as a brand name outside Britain than within. And Murdoch knows it

Published 04 March 2002

Murdoch woos pinko for Thunderer shock. In the moments following the much-leaked announcement that Peter Stothard, editor of the Times, was standing down, the most-wailed question at Wapping was: "What about me?" As the pall of disappointment settled over the executive offices, the second-most-asked question was: "Robert who?"

Well, Robert Thomson, actually - Australian, made his name on the Financial Times, and rumoured, maliciously perhaps, to be pro-euro. As ever, there is much method in Rupert Murdoch's madness.

The wooing of the young Thomson (41) indicates a clear change of strategy. Murdoch, having doubled the circulation of the Times in the past decade, sees at last a plan and a man to take the broadsheet over the million mark. In Thomson, he believes he has an editor who could pull off the ultimate circulation trick of holding on to his mid-market gains while reaching up for an untapped international market. For that is what Thomson showed as managing editor of the FT's US edition: there are readers for existing British broadsheets well beyond the national boundaries.

Thomson is also credited with one of the industry's more impressive product transformations - that of the FT's weekend supplement, from a section as arid as an FT pro-euro argument into a stylish and humorous read.

Thomson, who took sales of the FT in America from around 30,000 to 130,000, also knows a thing or two about the top end of the market. It's a marriage made in New Haven, perhaps.

Whatever you say about Peter Stothard - and, to his credit, his staff say he is urbane and kind, with a considerable intellect that never stoops to bully - he has taken the circulation of the Times from 377,000 in 1992 to 711,000 last month. Whether or not it is returning the profit on investment of almost a decade of price wars, only Les Hinton and Rupert Murdoch will know. But all newspapers have cut their prices or been creative with their bulk sales - and few editors can claim to leave on the back of a circulation increase. Price cuts usually result in short-term circulation gains. Stothard held on to most of his.

When Paul Dacre, now editor-in-chief of the Mail Group, was approached to edit the Times more than ten years ago, it was clear that Murdoch saw the growth area in the soft underbelly of the Telegraph and the top of the middle market occupied by the Daily Mail. There can be no doubt that most of the Times's new readership has come from the expanding middle classes and that, like other titles, it ruthlessly took advantage of a weakened Express. The trick now must be to hold on to its recently acquired, educated middle-class readers while reaching into the very top end of the broadsheet market. Enter straight-talking Aussie.

All indications are that Murdoch is setting his sights not simply on a push into the top end of the broadsheet market as the next stage of growth for the Times but, perhaps more importantly, into the international market. While the Times has to fight to be heard among a chorus of national newspapers in Britain, there is great scope to turn it into an influential international voice, developing both the North American and Asian markets.

The Times is a powerful national brand - arguably more powerful outside Britain than within it - that has never been fully utilised. And it can be no coincidence that Thomson would be the third senior appointment at News International - after Les Hinton and David Yelland, editor of the Sun - with a strong business background to be recruited from the States.

It has been commented upon in the Guardian that Thomson is pro-euro. If I remember correctly, it was the Guardian that famously and falsely outed David Yelland as pro-euro when he was appointed editor of the Sun.

If ever evidence were needed that the not-very-resigned former director of communications at the Department of Transport was a spin-doctor worthy of the name, then revisit pictures of him leaving his home on Monday. Obviously a student of the Diana, Princess of Wales School of Victims, Martin Sixsmith was photographed carrying a copy of the Sun with the front-page headline screaming: "LIAR BYERS". Nothing much in that, you may think. But you try picking up a newspaper and then carrying it back to front and upside-down, so that the splash headline is inside-out, so to speak, and perfectly photographable. The lumberjack shirt and ever- present family were a nice humbling touch, too, Marty - in stark contrast to the beleaguered and bespoke-suited Stephen Byers.

Which brings me to "beloved" and "beleaguered", currently the most-overused words in the British media - the first in relation to the late Princess Margaret, the second to the soon-to-be-late Byers. These are the two words that no one in public life ever wants attributed to them - the former because it means you never were (loved, that is) and the latter because you no longer are.

Front page of the Observer: "Helena Christensen on flogging lager, finding love and losing Michael Hutchence". Front cover of Life, the Observer magazine: "Helena Christensen on flogging lager, finding love and losing Michael Hutchence". Inside the magazine are three pages of Stuart Husband salivating over Christensen, with half a paragraph on her losing Michael Hutchence to Paula Yates. Christensen is not the only one feeling cheated by losing out on Hutchence.

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