Speaking to BBC Radio 4 on this Wednesday’s Media Show, Witherow explained how the power of scoops is amplified by news brands’ digital presence
With scoops often remaining in the public consciousness long after publication, Witherow spoke about the power of digital to amplify their impact: “What we see on digital is that when you have exclusives people really engage with that, much more.
“And they admire the papers for doing it and we had a string of really great exclusives over the years, and that’s what people remember.”
One scoop Witherow remembered having particular impact was the Oxfam sex abuse scandal reported in 2018: “Well that was brilliant reporting by Sean O’Neill, who independently discovered this, that Oxfam had been employing people who were abusing their aid workers on quite a scale.
“It was a shocking story because Oxfam has such a high reputation.”
The importance of digital as part of the news brand’s reach is shown in the range of platforms on which The Times now features content. “We are a multimedia platform, we do podcasts, we do video. We do the app, we do digital. We’re going to do some TV work. So the newspaper is fundamentally changing”, Witherow explained.
Listen to the full interview between BBC culture editor Katie Razzall and The Times editor John Witherow here.
