The Daily Telegraph

''The Daily Telegraph'', known online and elsewhere as ''The Telegraph'', is a national British daily broadsheet newspaper published in London by Telegraph Media Group and distributed across the United Kingdom and internationally.

It was founded by Arthur B. Sleigh in 1855 as ''The Daily Telegraph & Courier''. Considered a newspaper of record over ''The Times'' in the UK in the years up to 1997, ''The Telegraph'' generally has a reputation for high-quality journalism, and has been described as being "one of the world's great titles".

The paper's motto, "Was, is, and will be", appears in the editorial pages and has featured in every edition of the newspaper since 19 April 1858. The paper had a circulation of 363,183 in December 2018, descending further until it withdrew from newspaper circulation audits in 2019, having declined almost 80%, from 1.4 million in 1980.
United Newspapers PLC and Fleet Holdings PLC
', Monopolies and Mergers Commission (1985), pp. 5–16. Its sister paper, ''The Sunday Telegraph'', which started in 1961, had a circulation of 281,025 as of December 2018. The two sister newspapers are run separately, with different editorial staff, but there is cross-usage of stories.

''The Telegraph'' has had a number of news scoops, including the outbreak of World War II by rookie reporter Clare Hollingworth, described as "the scoop of the century", the 2009 MP expenses scandalwhich led to a number of high-profile political resignations and for which it was named 2009 British Newspaper of the Yearand its 2016 undercover investigation on the England football manager Sam Allardyce.

History

Founding and early history

The ''Daily Telegraph and Courier'' was founded by Colonel Arthur B. Sleigh in June 1855 to air a personal grievance against the future commander-in-chief of the British Army, Prince George, Duke of Cambridge.Burnham, 1955. p. 1 Joseph Moses Levy, the owner of ''The Sunday Times'', agreed to print the newspaper, and the first edition was published on 29 June 1855. The paper cost 2 d and was four pages long. Nevertheless, the first edition stressed the quality and independence of its articles and journalists:

However, the paper was not a success, and Sleigh was unable to pay Levy the printing bill. Levy took over the newspaper, his aim being to produce a cheaper newspaper than his main competitors in London, the '' Daily News'' and ''The Morning Post'', to expand the size of the overall market. Levy appointed his son, Edward Levy-Lawson, Lord Burnham, and Thornton Leigh Hunt to edit the newspaper. Lord Burnham relaunched the paper as ''The Daily Telegraph'', with the slogan "the largest, best, and cheapest newspaper in the world". Hunt laid out the newspaper's principles in a memorandum sent to Levy: "We should report all striking events in science, so told that the intelligent public can understand what has happened and can see its bearing on our daily life and our future. The same principle should apply to all other events—to fashion, to new inventions, to new methods of conducting business".

In 1876, Jules Verne published his novel ''Michael Strogoff'', whose plot takes place during a fictional uprising and war in Siberia. Verne included among the book's characters a war correspondent of ''The Daily Telegraph'', named Harry Blount—who is depicted as an exceptionally dedicated, resourceful and brave journalist, taking great personal risks to follow closely the ongoing war and bring accurate news of it to ''The Telegraph''s readership, ahead of competing papers.

1901 to 1945

In 1908, Kaiser Wilhelm II of Germany gave a controversial interview to ''The Daily Telegraph'' that severely damaged Anglo-German relations and added to international tensions in the build-up to World War I. In 1928, the son of Baron Burnham, Harry Lawson Webster Levy-Lawson, 2nd Baron Burnham, sold the paper to William Berry, 1st Viscount Camrose, in partnership with his brother Gomer Berry, 1st Viscount Kemsley and Edward Iliffe, 1st Baron Iliffe.

In 1937, the newspaper absorbed ''The Morning Post'', which traditionally espoused a conservative position and sold predominantly amongst the retired officer class. Originally William Ewart Berry, 1st Viscount Camrose, bought ''The Morning Post'' with the intention of publishing it alongside ''The Daily Telegraph'', but poor sales of the former led him to merge the two. For some years, the paper was retitled ''The Daily Telegraph and Morning Post'' before it reverted to just ''The Daily Telegraph''. In the late 1930s, Victor Gordon Lennox, ''The Telegraph''s diplomatic editor, published an anti-appeasement private newspaper ''The Whitehall Letter'' that received much of its information from leaks from Sir Robert Vansittart, the Permanent Under-Secretary of the Foreign Office, and Rex Leeper, the Foreign Office's Press Secretary.Watt, Donald Cameron "Rumors as Evidence" pages 276–286 from ''Russia War, Peace and Diplomacy'' edited by Ljubica & Mark Erickson, London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 2004 page 278. As a result, Gordon Lennox was monitored by MI5. In 1939, The Telegraph published Clare Hollingworth's scoop that Germany was to invade Poland.

In November 1940, Fleet Street, with its close proximity to the river and docklands, was subjected to almost daily bombing raids by the Luftwaffe and ''The Telegraph'' started printing in Manchester at Kemsley House (now The Printworks entertainment venue), which was run by Camrose's brother Kemsley. Manchester quite often printed the entire run of ''The Telegraph'' when its Fleet Street offices were under threat. The name Kemsley House was changed to Thomson House in 1959. In 1986, printing of Northern editions of the ''Daily'' and ''Sunday Telegraph'' moved to Trafford Park and in 2008 to Newsprinters at Knowsley, Liverpool.

During the Second World War, ''The Daily Telegraph'' covertly helped in the recruitment of code-breakers for Bletchley Park. The ability to solve ''The Telegraph''s crossword in under 12 minutes was considered to be a recruitment test. The newspaper was asked to organise a crossword competition, after which each of the successful participants was contacted and asked if they would be prepared to undertake "a particular type of work as a contribution to the war effort". The competition itself was won by F. H. W. Hawes of Dagenham who finished the crossword in less than eight minutes.

1946 to 1985

Both the Camrose (Berry) and Burnham (Levy-Lawson) families remained involved in management until Conrad Black took control in 1986. On the death of his father in 1954, Seymour Berry, 2nd Viscount Camrose assumed the chairmanship of the ''Daily Telegraph'' with his brother Michael Berry, Baron Hartwell as his editor-in-chief. During this period, the company saw the launch of sister paper ''The Sunday Telegraph'' in 1960.

1986 to 2004

Canadian businessman Conrad Black, through companies controlled by him, bought the Telegraph Group in 1986. Black, through his holding company Ravelston Corporation, owned 78% of Hollinger Inc. which in turn owned 30% of Hollinger International. Hollinger International in turn owned the Telegraph Group and other publications such as the ''Chicago Sun-Times'', the '' Jerusalem Post'' and ''The Spectator''.

On 18 January 2004, Black was dismissed as chairman of the Hollinger International board over allegations of financial wrongdoing. Black was also sued by the company. Later that day, it was reported that the Barclay brothers had agreed to purchase Black's 78% interest in Hollinger Inc. for £245m, giving them a controlling interest in the company, and to buy out the minority shareholders later. However, a lawsuit was filed by the Hollinger International board to try to block Black from selling his shares in Hollinger Inc. until an investigation into his dealings was completed. Black filed a countersuit but, eventually, United States judge Leo Strine sided with the Hollinger International board and blocked Black from selling his Hollinger Inc. shares to the twins.

On 7 March 2004, the twins announced that they were launching another bid, this time just for ''The Daily Telegraph'' and its Sunday sister paper rather than all of Hollinger Inc. The then owner of the '' Daily Express'', Richard Desmond, was also interested in purchasing the paper, selling his interest in several pornographic magazines to finance the initiative. Desmond withdrew in March 2004, when the price climbed above £600m, as did Daily Mail and General Trust plc a few months later on 17 June.

Since 2004

In November 2004, ''The Telegraph'' celebrated the tenth anniversary of its website, ''Electronic Telegraph'', now renamed ''www.telegraph.co.uk''. The ''Electronic Telegraph'' launched in 1995 with The Daily Telegraph Guide to the Internet' by writer Sue Schofield for an annual charge of £180.00. On 8 May 2006, the first stage of a major redesign of the website took place, with a wider page layout and greater prominence for audio, video and journalist blogs.

On 10 October 2005, ''The Daily Telegraph'' relaunched to incorporate a tabloid sports section and a new standalone business section. ''The Daily Mail''s star columnist and political analyst Simon Heffer left that paper in October 2005 to rejoin ''The Daily Telegraph'', where he has become associate editor. Heffer has written two columns a week for the paper since late October 2005 and is a regular contributor to the news podcast. In November 2005 the first regular podcast service by a newspaper in the UK was launched. Just before Christmas 2005, it was announced that ''The Telegraph'' titles would be moving from Canada Place in Canary Wharf, to new offices at Victoria Plaza at 111 Buckingham Palace Road near Victoria Station in central London. The new office features a "hub and spoke" layout for the newsroom to produce content for print and online editions.

In October 2006, with its relocation to Victoria, the company was renamed the Telegraph Media Group, repositioning itself as a multimedia company. On 2 September 2008, the ''Daily Telegraph'' was printed with colour on each page for the first time when it left Westferry for Newsprinters at Broxbourne, Hertfordshire, another arm of the Murdoch (Rupert Murdoch) company. The paper is also printed in Liverpool and Glasgow by Newsprinters. In May 2009, the daily and Sunday editions published details of MPs' expenses. This led to a number of high-profile resignations from both the ruling Labour administration and the Conservative opposition.

In June 2014, ''The Telegraph'' was criticised by '' Private Eye'' for its policy of replacing experienced journalists and news managers with less-experienced staff and search engine optimisers.

On 26 October 2019, the ''Financial Times'' reported that the Barclay Brothers were about to put the Telegraph Media Group up for sale. The ''Financial Times'' also reported that the Daily Mail and General Trust (owner of the '' Daily Mail'', ''The Mail on Sunday'', ''Metro'' and ''Ireland on Sunday'') would be interested in buying.

''The Daily Telegraph'' supported Liz Truss in the July–September 2022 Conservative Party leadership election.

Political stance

''The Daily Telegraph'' is politically conservative and has endorsed the Conservative Party at every UK general election since 1945. The personal links between the paper's editors and the leadership of the Conservative Party, along with the paper's generally right-wing stance and influence over Conservative activists, have led the paper commonly to be referred to, especially in '' Private Eye'', as the ''Torygraph''. Even when Conservative support was shown to have slumped in the opinion polls and Labour gained the ascendant, the newspaper remained loyal to the Conservatives. This loyalty continued after Labour ousted the Conservatives from power by an election result in 1997, and in the face of Labour election wins in 2001 and the third successive Labour election win in 2005.

When the Barclay brothers purchased the Telegraph Group for around £665m in late June 2004, Sir David Barclay suggested that ''The Daily Telegraph'' might no longer be the "house newspaper" of the Conservatives in the future. In an interview with ''The Guardian'' he said, "Where the government are right we shall support them". The editorial board endorsed the Conservative Party in the 2005 general election.

During the 2014 Scottish independence referendum, the paper supported the Better Together 'No' Campaign. Alex Salmond, the former leader of the SNP, called ''The Telegraph'' "extreme" on ''Question Time'' in September 2015.

In the 2016 United Kingdom European Union membership referendum it endorsed voting to leave the EU.

During the 2019 Conservative leadership election, ''The Daily Telegraph'' endorsed their former columnist Boris Johnson. In 2019, former columnist Graham Norton, who had left the paper in late 2018, said "about a year before I left, it took a turn" and criticised it for "toxic" political stances, namely for a piece defending US Supreme Court then-nominee Brett Kavanaugh and for being "a mouthpiece for Boris Johnson" whose columns were allegedly published with "no fact-checking at all".

It was fined £30,000 in 2015 for "sending an unsolicited email to hundreds of thousands of its subscribers, urging them to vote for the Conservatives."

LGBT+ rights

In 2012, prior to the legalisation of same-sex marriage in the United Kingdom, Telegraph View published an editorial stating that it was a "pointless distraction" as "many ay couplesalready avail themselves of the civil partnerships introduced by Labour". ''The Telegraph'' wrote in another editorial that same year that it feared that changing "the law on gay marriage risks inflaming anti-homosexual bigotry".

In 2015, the newspaper published an article by former editor Charles Moore claiming a "gay rights sharia" was dictating what the LGBT+ community should believe following Dolce & Gabbana's openly gay founders criticising gay adoptions. Moore wrote that "If you are gay, Mr Strudwick seemed to assert, there are certain things you must believe. Nothing else is permitted under the gay rights sharia." Moore has previously expressed his views that civil partnerships achieved a "balance" for heterosexual and homosexual couples. In 2013, he wrote that "Respectable people are truly terrified of being thought anti-homosexual. In a way, they are right to be, because attacking people for their personal preferences can be a nasty thing."

Also in 2015, ''The Telegraph'' published its "Out at Work" list, naming "the top 50 list of LGBT executives".

Since then, ''The Telegraph'' appeared to shift towards a more liberal attitude on LGBT+ issues, publishing articles that then-Prime Minister Theresa May needed to be "serious about LGBT equality" and that "bathroom bills" in Texas – which were criticised as being transphobic – were "a Kafkaesque state intrusion". The newspaper also featured an article written by Maria Munir about their experience coming out to President Barack Obama as non-binary. Stonewall CEO Ruth Hunt penned an article in ''The Telegraph'' after the Orlando nightclub shooting in June 2016 that the attack on a gay nightclub "grew out of everyday homophobia".

Also in 2016, Telegraph Executive Director Lord Black was awarded Peer of the Year at the 2016 PinkNews Awards for his campaigning on LGBT rights.

''The Telegraph'' has published articles which have been criticised by ''PinkNews'' as transphobic. In 2017, the newspaper published an article by Allison Pearson titled: "Will our spineless politicians' love affair with LGBT ever end?", arguing that NHS patients' being asked their sexual orientation was unnecessary and another in 2018 with the headline: "The tyranny of the transgender minority has got to be stopped".

Sister publications

''The Sunday Telegraph''

''The Daily Telegraph''s sister Sunday paper was founded in 1961. The writer Sir Peregrine Worsthorne is probably the best known journalist associated with the title (1961–1997), eventually being editor for three years from 1986. In 1989, the Sunday title was briefly merged into a seven-day operation under Max Hastings's overall control. In 2005, the paper was revamped, with Stella being added to the more traditional television and radio section. It costs £2.20 and includes separate Money, Living, Sport and Business supplements.
Circulation of ''The Sunday Telegraph'' in July 2010 was 505,214 (ABC).

''The Young Telegraph''

''The Young Telegraph'' was a weekly section of ''The Daily Telegraph'' published as a 14-page supplement in the weekend edition of the newspaper. ''The Young Telegraph'' featured a mixture of news, features, cartoon strips and product reviews aimed at 8–12-year-olds. It was edited by Damien Kelleher (1993–1997) and Kitty Melrose (1997–1999). Launched in 1990, the award-winning supplement also ran original serialised stories featuring popular brands such as ''Young Indiana Jones'' and the British children's sitcom ''Maid Marian and Her Merry Men''.

In 1995, an interactive spin-off called ''Electronic Young Telegraph'' was launched on floppy disk. Described as an interactive computer magazine for children, ''Electronic Young Telegraph'' was edited by Adam Tanswell, who led the relaunch of the product on CD-Rom in 1998. ''Electronic Young Telegraph'' featured original content including interactive quizzes, informative features and computer games, as well as entertainment news and reviews. It was later re-branded as ''T:Drive'' in 1999.

Website

Telegraph.co.uk is the online version of the newspaper. It uses the banner title ''The Telegraph'' and includes articles from the print editions of ''The Daily Telegraph'' and ''The Sunday Telegraph'', as well as web-only content such as breaking news, features, picture galleries and blogs. It was named UK Consumer Website of the Year in 2007 and Digital Publisher of the year in 2009 by the Association of Online Publishers. The site is overseen by Kate Day, digital director of Telegraph Media Group. Other staff include Shane Richmond, head of technology (editorial), and Ian Douglas, head of digital production. The site, which has been the focus of the group's efforts to create an integrated news operation producing content for print and online from the same newsroom, completed a relaunch during 2008 involving the use of the Escenic content management system, popular among northern European and Scandinavian newspaper groups. Telegraph TV is a Video on Demand service run by ''The Daily Telegraph'' and the ''Sunday Telegraph''. It is hosted on ''The Telegraph''s website, telegraph.co.uk.

Telegraph.co.uk became the most popular UK newspaper site in April 2008. It was overtaken by Guardian.co.uk in April 2009 and later by "Mail Online". As of December 2010, "Telegraph.co.uk" was the third most visited British newspaper website with 1.7 million daily browsers compared to 2.3 million for "Guardian.co.uk" and nearly 3 million for "Mail Online".

In November 2012, international customers accessing the Telegraph.co.uk site would have to sign up for a subscription package. Visitors had access to 20 free articles a month before having to subscribe for unlimited access. In March 2013, the pay meter system was also rolled out in the UK.

History

The website was launched, under the name ''electronic telegraph'' at midday on 15 November 1994 at the headquarters of ''The Daily Telegraph'' at Canary Wharf in London Docklands with Ben Rooney as its first editor. It was Europe's first daily web-based newspaper. At this time, the modern internet was still in its infancy, with as few as 10,000 websites estimated to have existed at the time – compared to more than 100 billion by 2009. In 1994, only around 1% of the British population (some 600,000 people) had internet access at home, compared to more than 80% in 2009.

Initially, the site published only the top stories from the print edition of the newspaper but it gradually increased its coverage until virtually all of the newspaper was carried online and the website was also publishing original material. The website, hosted on a Sun Microsystems Sparc 20 server and connected via a 64 kbit/s leased line from Demon Internet, was edited by Ben Rooney. Key personnel behind the launch of the site were Matthew Doull and Saul Klein and the then marketing manager of ''The Daily Telegraph'', Hugo Drayton, and the webmaster Fiona Carter. Drayton later became managing director of the newspaper.

An early coup for the site was the publication of articles by Ambrose Evans-Pritchard on Bill Clinton and the Whitewater controversy. The availability of the articles online brought a large American audience to the site. In 1997, the Clinton administration issued a 331-page report that accused Evans-Pritchard of peddling "right-wing inventions". Derek Bishton, who by then had succeeded Rooney as editor, later wrote: "In the days before ET it would have been highly unlikely that anyone in the US would have been aware of Evans-Pritchard's work – and certainly not to the extent that the White House would be forced to issue such a lengthy rebuttal." Bishton, who later became consulting editor for Telegraph Media Group, was followed as editor by Richard Burton, who was made redundant in August 2006. Edward Roussel replaced Burton.

''My Telegraph''

''My Telegraph'' offers a platform for readers to have their own blog, save articles, and network with other readers. Launched in May 2007, My Telegraph won a Cross Media Award from international newspaper organisation IFRA in October 2007. One of the judges, Robert Cauthorn, described the project as "the best deployment of blogging yet seen in any newspaper anywhere in the world".

Notable stories

In December 2010, ''Telegraph'' reporters posing as constituents secretly recorded Business Secretary Vince Cable. In an undisclosed part of the transcript given to the BBC
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