The UK’s Times and Sunday Times have merged their websites and launched new apps, ceasing its rolling news operation in favour of four online editions each day.
An edition will be produced each day for all platforms, then updated on digital ones at 9am, midday and 5pm on weekday – and at midday and 6pm on weekends. The titles will still follow big breaking stories at editors’ discretion, they said.
Readers don’t come to us for breaking news; they can go to the BBC and Twitter for that, which are free,” said Alan Hunter, The Times head of digital. “They come to us for the authority of our reporting, opinion and analysis. Breaking news has become a commodity, and it’s hard to charge people for it. We believe in the power of digital editions.”
The new website has been designed to give a cleaner user experience and will feature The Times masthead from Monday to Saturday, which will change to The Sunday Times on the last day of the week.
Each title will retain its separate editors and teams. There will be no redundancies, according to the publisher, but the addition of a four-person team will handle the curation of the mobile and Web experiences.
The News Corp-owned paper will be appointing a new smartphone and Web editor, along with a deputy and an assistant. All print content, along with additional Web-only stories will run online.
The new site features a new font called Times Digital, which has wider characters and simpler serifs – all aimed at making it easier to read.
The two former papers retain their paywalls and the company’s chief operating officer David Dinsmore has said they were working “brilliantly”. But he said it would be “foolish” to rule out changing the policy in the future. It was reported last October that the Sun would be dropping its paywall.
The Times and Sunday Times have digital subscriptions of 172,000 across seven days, figures released by the company show. In 2013, it was reported that they had 150,000 subscribers