The Daily Telegraph

The Daily Telegraph is a daily morning broadsheet newspaper distributed throughout the United Kingdom and internationally. The newspaper was founded by Colonel Arthur B. Sleigh in June 1855 as the Daily Telegraph and Courier, and is currently owned by David and Frederick Barclay.

In January 2009, the Telegraph was the highest selling newspaper among British broadsheets and former broadsheets, with a certified average daily circulation of 842,912. This compared with a circulation of 617,483 for The Times, 358,844 for The Guardian, and 215,504 for The Independent. According to a MORI survey conducted in 2005, 64% of Telegraph readers intended to support the Conservative Party in the coming elections. The circulation for July 2010 was 678,391, against 502,588 for The Times.

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. 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 2d and was four pages long. It was not a success, however, 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 then appointed his son, Edward Levy-Lawson, and Thornton Leigh Hunt to edit the newspaper, and relaunched it 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 in order to follow closely the ongoing war and bring accurate news of it to the Telegraph's readership, ahead of competing papers.



Later history
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 the 1st Baron Burnham sold it to the 1st Viscount Camrose, in partnership with his brother Viscount Kemsley and the 1st Baron Iliffe. Both the Camrose (Berry) and Burnham (Levy-Lawson) families remained involved in management until Conrad Black took control in 1986.

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 November 1940, with Fleet Street subjected to almost daily bombing raids by the Luftwaffe, the Telegraph started printing in Manchester at Kemsley House, 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 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.

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 (1961–97), eventually being editor for three years from 1986. In 1989 the Sunday title was briefly merged in to a seven-day operation under Max Hastings's overall control. In 2005 the paper was revamped, a glossy fashion magazine being added to the more traditional review section. It costs £1.90 and includes separate Money, Home and Living, Sport, Travel and Business supplements. Cirulation of the Sunday telegraph in July 2010 was 505,214 (ABC)

Recent history
The Daily Telegraph is owned by the Barclay brothers. Until January 2004, the newspaper group was controlled by Canadian businessman Conrad Black. Black, through his holding company Ravelston Corporation, owned Hollinger Inc. which in turn owns 30% of Hollinger International and, under a deal masterminded by Andrew Knight through which Black bought the newspaper group in 1986, owns 78% of the voting rights. Hollinger Inc. also owned the liberal Chicago Sun-Times, the Jerusalem Post, and conservative publications such as 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 Hollinger Inc. from Black, giving them the controlling interest in the newspaper group. They then launched a takeover bid for the rest of the group, valuing the company at £200m. However, a suit has been filed by the Hollinger International board with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission to try to block Black selling shares in the company until an investigation into his dealings have been completed. Black filed a counter-suit but eventually United States judge Leo Strine sided with the Hollinger International board and blocked Black from selling his Hollinger Inc. shares and interests to the twins. On Sunday 7 March, the twins announced they were launching another takeover bid, this time just for the Daily Telegraph and its Sunday sister paper rather than the whole stable. Current 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 on 17 June.

Eventually, the Barclay brothers purchased Hollinger, and with it the Telegraph, for around £665m in late June 2004.

Amidst the unraveling of the takeover Sir David Barclay suggested that The Daily Telegraph might in the future no longer be the "house newspaper" of the Conservatives. 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.

15 November 2004 saw the tenth anniversary of the launch of the Telegraph's website Electronic Telegraph. Now re-launched as telegraph.co.uk, the website was the UK's first national newspaper online. Monday 8 May 2006 saw the first stage of a major redesign of the Telegraph's website, based on 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, known for his combative style and wit, has written two columns a week for the Telegraph since late October 2005 and is a regular contributor to the news podcast.

November, 2005 - launches the first regular podcast service by a newspaper in the UK.

Just before Christmas 2005, it was announced that the Telegraph titles will be moving from Canada Place in Canary Wharf, to Victoria Plaza near Victoria Station in central London. The new office features a 'hub and spoke' layout for the newsroom, which will produce content for print and online editions.

In October 2006, with its relocation to Buckingham Palace Road, Victoria, the Telegraph rebranded itself 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 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.

Website
Telegraph.co.uk is the online version of the newspaper. It includes the 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 2009 by the Association of Online Publishers.

The site is overseen by Edward Roussel, digital editor of Telegraph Media Group, and Marcus Warren as editor. Other staff include Shane Richmond, head of technology (editorial), Ian Douglas, head of digital production and Chei Amlani, online sport editor.

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 an Online Video on Demand Television service run by The Daily Telegraph and the Sunday Telegraph. It is hosted on The Telegraph's official 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. The traffic generated by the MPs' expenses scandal means Telegraph.co.uk is likely to regain the top spot in the May 2009 ABCes - the site picked up 1 in every 756 UK page views in May.

8% of the Telegraph's traffic comes from social media sites, much more than for any other site. Part of this is down to its success with the Digg widget.

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. It was Europe's first daily web-based newspaper.

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 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 is now consulting editor for Telegraph Media Group, was followed as editor by Richard Burton, who was made redundant in August 2006. Edward Roussel replaced Burton.

The site is now the most popular UK newspaper website with 18.6 million unique users per month, narrowly beating guardian.co.uk which is read by 18.5 million people monthly.

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".

Posts on user blogs are not moderated by the newspaper, and registered users can leave comments on their own and other blogs (including Telegraph journalist blogs) without waiting for approval. Comments on stories on the main website must be approved by the website's moderators before appearing on the page.

Political stance
The Daily Telegraph has been politically conservative in modern times. The personal links between the paper's editors and the leadership of the Conservative Party, along with the paper's influence over Conservative activists, has resulted in the paper commonly being referred to, especially in Private Eye, as the Torygraph.

Notable mistakes
The Daily Telegraph has published at least four premature obituaries:


 * Cockie Hoogterp, the second wife of Baron Blixen, in 1938 after the Baron's third wife died in a car accident. Mrs. Hoogterp sent all her bills back marked "Deceased" and survived her premature obituary by over 50 years.
 * Dave Swarbrick in 1999, prompting much embarrassing publicity for the newspaper, and Swarbrick's remark "It's not the first time I have died in Coventry."
 * Dorothy Southworth Ritter, the widow of Tex Ritter and mother of John Ritter, in August 2001. She eventually died in 2003, two months after her son's death.
 * Ballet dancer Katharine Sergava in 2003, which also caused The New York Times to print an erroneous obituary based on The Telegraph's.

On Wednesday, 24 February 1988, The Daily Telegraph was printed with the wrong date: Thursday 25 February was printed by mistake. This caused complaints from confused readers, but also inspired the first front page cartoon by Matt Pritchett, who now has a cartoon on the front page of the Telegraph almost every day. The cartoon had the caption: "I hope I have a better Thursday than I did yesterday".

Editors

 * 1855: Thornton Leigh Hunt
 * 1873: Edwin Arnold
 * 1888: John le Sage
 * 1923: Fred Miller
 * 1924: Arthur Watson
 * 1950: Colin Coote
 * 1964: Maurice Green
 * 1974: Bill Deedes
 * 1986: Max Hastings
 * 1995: Charles Moore
 * 2003: Martin Newland
 * 2005: John Bryant
 * 2007: William Lewis
 * 2009: Tony Gallagher