Wow. What a response

The response to the formal announcement of the launch of The Times has been quite remarkable. All have been very positive.* Letter writers have suggested content ranging from crosswords to more and better international coverage. This will be a reader driven newspaper and its quite amazing how these suggestions correspond to the demands expressed by our 120 000 future subscriber readers in research we conducted recently. There has also been quite a bit of blogging on the site from staff Colin, Gregor and Carly, but also from Matthew Buckland of the Mail&Guardian and that institution’s creative wizard and the brains behind Amatomu, Vincent Maher. Also a story by Chris Moerdyk on bizcommunity.com. And then there have been more job applications from journalists than I can manage. To prospective Times reporters, multimedia producers, photographers and sub-editors, I can only say that we will advertise the jobs we have not already filled from within the company soon.
Thanks for all the kind words.

* Full disclosure: Did take a bit of a pasting from thenewnewmedia.com, where Hilton wrote:

In announcing the paper this weekend, phrases like “totally integrated paper” and “24 hour news experience online and in print” were used. Isn’t this the norm?

In the piece in the Business Times, readers were also treated to this delightful description: “In a significant break with traditional newspapers, The Times will use a range of digital products — like a website, pod casts (sic!), cellphones and e-mail — to constantly interact with its readers.” Give me a break. Since when is this “significant”?

Hilton, you got us on the cliches, but I think we are going to do this online/newspaper integration in a somewhat unique way. I will post about how we have designed the newsroom for integration from the ground up (walls are being bashed down as we speak) a little later on.