Top People Write to the Times

Author and media studies lecturer Wober has conducted surveys of the Readers' Letters pages of the national newspapers and concludes that, despite its changing editorial profile, The Times is still the top people's newspaper when it comes to correspondence. He writes: "Just how significant is the main correspondence page in The Times? The answer lies partly in examining other such pages. The tabloid newspapers carry much smaller letters sections (if any at all) and include very few elite contributors. Quite simply, a letter in the Daily Express, Mail or Mirror, even on a serious matter, is unlikely to be seen by legislators or civil servants. Among the broadsheets that offer serious journalism, The Independent and Guardian each have less than half the circulation of The Times, so even if they attract a substantial elite readership, and letters from those within it, the results do not reach such a large section of the public... This leaves the right-wing Telegraph, with a considerably higher circulation than The Times -; yet examination of several copies suggests that The Times' more centrist political standpoint attracts a wider spectrum of influential correspondents."