Page 2: The Times changes again — opinion after news

The Times today moved its leader columns/editorials back to a traditional place from page 2.  Hold the front page?  Not quite, but it’s important.

It had moved the views of the leader writers to page 2.  It had emphasised that the paper edition was about opinion.  More like a magazine.  Less like the website about news.

Opinion after news?

Now the editor says the reason for the move is that readers have found it perplexing to read opinion before they have read the news story.

All very well as long as the opinion is not on a news story to come.   Yet now the whole sections of world news and business news come after the opinion.

Am I bothered?

So why bother  to comment, you may ask:

  • on a dying media – print on paper;
  • a loss making publication – The Times;
  • and a tiny shift of the flat plan?

Precisely because of this.   How the challenged parts of the media respond to their plight is important.

No step back to the future

Will it work?  It may satisfy the letter writers of the focus groups The Times listened to.  But it is a step back: to the future?

There is no reason to believe that it will.

Enter our picture-caption competition on Facebook and win a free e-learning course

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *