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Privacy and Injunctions - Evidence - Parliament

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Martin Clarke, publisher, Mail Online, Edward Roussel, Digital Editor, Telegraph Media<br />

Group, <strong>and</strong> Philip Webster, editor, Times Online—Oral evidence (QQ 1306–1383)<br />

minor. The digital world allows you to sell your wares anywhere in the world, <strong>and</strong> what we<br />

have discovered is that there is a big appetite around the world—anywhere they can read<br />

English—for not just the Mail Online but for The Telegraph, The Sun <strong>and</strong> all the other British<br />

websites. Those that are free have big overseas readerships.<br />

The other factor that came into our thinking was we could not just look at what our<br />

competition in what we used to call Fleet Street were doing; we had to look at our bigger<br />

competition online for news at the big portals like Microsoft <strong>and</strong> Yahoo!, AOL—or now<br />

AOL HuffPo. Of course, none of them were ever going to be not free, so if we were going<br />

to compete on a level playing field with them, we had to be free, but we also had to be big,<br />

<strong>and</strong> that was the path we chose.<br />

Q1516 Ms Stuart: But is your website ahead of the printed copy or not?<br />

Martin Clarke: Yes, largely.<br />

Q1517 Ms Stuart: By 8 o’clock in the morning you have your hard copy <strong>and</strong> the<br />

online will have to catch up with it.<br />

Martin Clarke: Yes, but the content of the paper would go up between 10 <strong>and</strong><br />

midnight. By midnight it should all be online. We edit it ourselves; we are driven by our<br />

own editorial imperatives, which may not be the same as the paper. Obviously during the<br />

day anything that happens once the paper has gone to bed, that just goes straight online—<br />

breaking news or news that the paper may not ever be interested in. We do a lot more<br />

science, more politics, a lot more foreign news, <strong>and</strong> obviously a lot more showbiz. We run<br />

under our own steam. Probably 60% to 70% of content that we put online does not start<br />

with the paper; it starts with our own online journalists. The paper may do a version of the<br />

same story later in the day, but probably the first version will be done online. What we take<br />

from the paper are the exclusive news stories, <strong>and</strong> obviously the paper does the<br />

contentious, investigative, difficult stories, if you like, that obviously you cannot do on a<br />

breaking news service. Exclusive features, exclusive columnists <strong>and</strong> anything that is really<br />

exclusive would start life in the paper, <strong>and</strong> the breaking news, what we call all-round news,<br />

would be on the website first.<br />

Q1518 George Eustice: How much of an internal tension is there in your<br />

organisations between breaking news as it happens <strong>and</strong> stories as you get them, <strong>and</strong> saving<br />

something back for your print edition so you have an exclusive scoop the following day?<br />

Martin Clarke: I do not know where you get the idea that there are tensions within<br />

newspapers.<br />

Q1519 George Eustice: I suppose if the newspapers are still the largest part of<br />

your business model, there is a danger of your compromising your print if you put too much<br />

online; but if you do not put enough online, it is always going to remain a minnow.<br />

Martin Clarke: We generally do not have a lot of tension because the rules are<br />

very clear. If it is an exclusive story that we can put in print first, then we do. If it<br />

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