• Between the prestige of the 'BBC' and the scandal of the tabloids

The City of London is dominated in the distance from John Witherow's glazed office. The editor of The Times (awarded at the International Journalism Awards of EL MUNDO) has been looking at the intricate political and media landscape in the United Kingdom for seven years. Tanned in his day in the Falklands War, fused for two decades in The Sunday Times , Whiterow (Johannesburg, 1962) keeps alive the competitive spirit that comes from tennis: he has been able to play the tie break between paper and editing digital in the middle of Brexit.

After more than a decade, it would be said that the big newspapers continue with the same dilemma. Do we charge or not charge for the digital edition? We were among the first to solve that dilemma. Ten years ago (I was directing The Sunday Times ) we created the payment wall. We have been experimenting, but basically all of our content is closed to subscribers. It was a drastic decision that has paid off over time. Others have followed our steps with hybrid formulas, such as the New York Times , which has managed to enter 800 million dollars for the digital edition ... Only quality journalism will survive the digital revolution. The best prospects we have are precisely the means that we bet on differentiated, exclusive news, analysis, opinions ... Now, quality has a price, and we are discovering that there are enough people willing to pay it, in the same way that they pay the price. Netflix or Spotify subscription. Faced with the phenomenon of fake news , readers also want media to rely on. Popular newspapers, our famous tabloids, have it harder: everything they offer can be found for free on the Internet. Anyone would say that the British press is in better health than the rest of the continent ... These last four years, with the Brexit, have been an informative flood. But paper sales continue to fall, although it is true that the press here has a tradition and a superior pull to that of many European countries. I am not one of those who predict the death of newspapers, perhaps in 20 years we will continue to have them in kiosks and supermarkets. 80% of our income still comes from paper and 20% from the digital edition, but that proportion will change perhaps faster than we think. Printing a newspaper on paper, mobilizing a fleet of vans and having thousands of distribution points is not only very expensive, but highly anti-ecological. You have stood up to the philosophy of digital first . The online presence of The Times has not suffered even more? In the newspapers that have opted for digital first, the paper edition has suffered. That is something that can be allowed, for example, The Guardian , which has a charitable foundation behind and has taken advantage of its digital opening to achieve a great international implementation. We have achieved a balance over time. Moreover, we have decided to get out of the spiral of breaking news because we cannot compete with the BBC . We have implemented three daily closings in the online edition because it is what the readers wanted, instead of updating the home minute. We only skip it when there is really important news. We have also concluded that less is more. We have reduced content to preserve quality. In the face of tense journalism that is so much in Spain, you talk a lot about "constructive journalism." Can you explain it to us? We haven't invented it. This comes from the study made by Danish television journalist Ulirk Haagerup. We have been letting ourselves be guided by the motto if it bleeds, it leads for a long time. The media project a great negativity on the audience and make believe that the world is worse than it really is. Readers appreciate a positive turn and a search for solutions, and we apply that principle to issues ranging from climate change to the wave of knife crimes in London. His newspaper took a definite stance against Brexit. How did the defeat fit in? Sportily, as in tennis. And that was also what we did after the victory of the EU's exit in the referendum. I was in favor of permanence, the vast majority of our readers were. But we try once again to adopt a constructive stance. Rupert Murdoch defended Brexit publicly and notoriously. How difficult was it to maintain independence from the pressure of the editor? We had total editorial freedom. Interestingly, our brother The Sunday Times supported Brexit, as did The Sun. But Murdoch respected our position and there was no interference. He is a man who loves journalism and respects journalists. Let's talk about Boris Johnson. Can a bad journalist be a good prime minister? Almost everyone knows that he was fired from his first job in The Times for inventing an appointment ... Yes, it was also an appointment falsely attributed to his godfather (historian Colin Lucas). But I wouldn't say exactly that Boris was a bad journalist, rather a naughty journalist. Although it is true that his way of twisting the truth when he was a correspondent in Brussels for The Daily Telegraph contributed significantly to Euroscepticism in this country, and now is when he has reaped the harvest. If these elections have been a good thing, they have brought us clarity, after three years of division and paralysis. Boris now has a year to go from the optimism that infected the British, and how well it worked in the campaign, to the pragmatism he will need during this critical year. Will there be a new referendum in Scotland? Will Brexit open the doors to the unification of Ireland? Boris will continue to deny in full before Nicola Sturgeon's claims to hold a new referendum. Northern Ireland is another matter: there is an inevitable demographic change that benefits Republicans. In another order of things, the hard 'Megxit' has been confirmed. I see that the subject has also been very interested in Spain. What has become clear after all this is that the Royals remain a very dysfunctional family. By the way, how is Juan Carlos doing? I wanted to close the interview talking about his experience as a war correspondent in Las Malvinas, aboard the Invincible aircraft carrier ... Better not remember. I was a terrible war correspondent.

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