Moving+with+The+Times,+Adele+Shevel,+Sunday+Times

Sunday Times, Johannesburg, 08 April 2007
=Moving with The Times=




 * Sign of the times:** //The editor of The Times, Ray Hartley, and his deputy, Moses Mudzwiti, plan SA’s newest paper. Picture: Marianne Pretorius//

//The Sunday Times is launching a trendsetting daily, The Times, writes// **Adele Shevel**

THE Sunday Times, South Africa’s largest and most influential weekly newspaper, is launching a daily paper, The Times, at the beginning of June.

Ray Hartley, the deputy editor of the Sunday Times, will edit The Times. He said The Times would first be “accurate and fair, then smart, fun and playful. We’re not going to be laddish. We don’t want to offend the 52% women readers.”

The paper will focus on hard, breaking news, and will keep an eye on developing trends. It will be printed in tabloid format and consist of about 48 pages. However, its content will be quality mainstream journalism.

It will be delivered exclusively to Sunday Times subscribers in major metropolitan areas, making it one of the country’s biggest papers from its launch.

In a significant break with traditional newspapers, The Times will use a range of digital products — like a website, pod casts, cellphones and e-mail — to constantly interact with its readers. Readers’ comments, interaction with public figures — and even their pictures — will be an important part of the content of The Times and its digital products.

Hartley said a new, contemporary approach was necessary because many South Africans — especially younger people who do not read newspapers — consume media from sources other than print.

Of the Sunday Times’s 127 000 subscribers, 54% are online, 55% are African and 52% are women.

“Their interest is the Sunday Times, but they don’t want a great big newspaper every day,” said Hartley.

This week, the newspaper’s executives are setting off on a road show to present the new product to companies, marketers and advertising agencies.

Mike Robertson, the CEO of Johncom Media, said Sunday Times research showed that a large proportion of the newspaper’s 127 000 subscribers do not read a daily newspaper. This represented a significant gap in the market, which The Times is setting out to fill.

Robertson added that subscribers who do read daily newspapers do not trust them as much as they trust the Sunday Times.

A second reason behind the launch of the daily was to increase subscriptions to the Sunday Times. The added value of a daily will attract subscribers, whose numbers have shot up from 30 000 to 127 000 in five years. Robertson said a prospective money-spinner for The Times would be pages that would advertise thousands of jobs a day.

Hartley began his career at the Sunday Times in 1993 and worked his way up from junior political reporter to deputy editor and online editor.

Hartley will be joined by about 10 members of staff from the Sunday Times. Mondli Makhanya, editor of the Sunday Times, and editor-in-chief of both publications, said: “We deliberately made sure some of the people went to The Times because we want to make sure the Sunday Times DNA is transferred.

“It’s part and parcel of the Sunday Times. It has to live by the ethos of the Sunday Times and will meet the high standards of the Sunday Times.”

He said Hartley was “one of South Africa’s finest newsmen”.

“His understanding of the South African news consumer is immense and he has an incredible grasp of the dynamics of South African society. He will produce a world-class newspaper that will be in tune with our highly mobile and rapidly transforming society.”

The Times is recruiting the best in the rest of the newspaper industry. “The investment and backing is there,” Hartley said.

Gisele Wertheim-Aymes, general manager: sales and trade marketing, said the response to the project was positive, though it had not yet formally gone to market.

“Executive interviews have provided us with research feedback in terms of expectations,” she said.

She attributes the reason for the positive response to the fact that the paper is South Africa’s first truly interactive daily paper, with 310 000 readers from day one.

Advertising rates will be competitive, she added.

Hartley said that the bulk of Sunday Times subscribers are high earners who take home more than R20 000 per household a month.

“We know where they live, their interests and we have a detailed breakdown of what they want.

“We think advertisers will love the opportunity to reach this market every day.” Meanwhile, after 14 years at the Sunday Times, Hartley faces a little problem: “It will be weird to have Saturdays free.”


 * From: http://www.sundaytimes.co.za/article.aspx?ID=431875**

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