Wednesday, September 19, 2012

Daily pictorial


The Times has a new[ish] picture editor – Sue Connolly (who took over from Paul Sanders). I only spotted this change because she was given a name check for a persuasive analysis, in last Saturday’s paper, of where those Peeping Tom pictures of the Duchess of Cambridge were taken.

I wonder if those wrap-around pictorial covers – which I think started with the breathtaking juxtaposition of the Canaletto with a photographic panorama of the Jubilee procession along the Thames, but was most notably continued - & copied by most other newspapers - for every day of the Olympics – were her idea. These no doubt played a large part in the spectacular increase in circulation - about half the total 2 million extra papers sold during the Olympic Games were copies of The Times or The Sunday Times, we are told.

The covers continued throughout the Paralympics too, though it was noticeably only a normal, single sheet double-page spread, rather than the double folded sheet, on higher quality paper supported by advertising from the sponsors, which we got for the Olympics ‘proper’.

Which makes all the more admirable the decision of Justin King to sponsor the Paralympics, a decision which was regarded by many as a gamble when it was made, well before the public revealed the strength & size of their support.