The Sunday Times
Sunday Times
And it was arguably encapsulated by one campaign: End This Bloody Disgrace, which helped win a promised £10 billion-plus in compensation for victims of infected blood, the biggest scandal in NHS history.
Led by Political Editor Caroline Wheeler, the culmination of her 23-year crusade, it was launched in April and demanded a full and fair settlement for all. Labour pledged to make it happen. Jeremy Hunt backed it. And just last week (December 2024) the first payments were made to families. It was a fine example of campaigning, punchy Sunday journalism and a highlight in a stand-out year for The Sunday Times.
Our digital numbers continued to excel, Sir Chris Hoy's remarkable interview with Decca Aitkenhead in October when he revealed he had terminal cancer had global impact.
In America, Megan Agnew's cover story with the so-called trad wife went viral, and then some, generating nearly three million unique visitors to our site and thousands of new subscribers. The print sale continues to outperform the market (even rising in OCTOBER – CHECK!), while subscriber numbers keep climbing, up more than 10 percent, to nearly 615,000 paying customers.
Over the last 12 months The Sunday Times also: *Broke the Labour ''freebiegate'' scandal in August by revealing the story of Waheed Ali's Downing Street pass after funding Starmer's wardrobe and glasses. Gabriel Pogrund then broke the incendiary story that Starmer's wife had also benefited from Ali's largesse. The following week we followed up with Angela Rayner's trips to Ali's New York flat. The PM's opinion poll rating has not recovered since. *Told the world how Hamas terrorists raped and sexually assaulted victims of October 7. Christina Lamb's reporting in December last year led to global publicity and led to an inquiry by the International Criminal Court. Meanwhile, Anshel Pfeffer was one of the first reporters allowed into Gaza to report on Israel's response to the massacre. *From Ukraine, we told the world how Putin has invented a devastating new tactic against Ukraine: glide bombs, crudely assembled weapons that went way into Ukraine, destroying infrastructure. We also interviewed Russian prisoners of war revealing the first accounts of the chaos, desperation and disorder in the ranks of the military. *Our interview with Chris Hoy was accompanied by a plea for prostate cancer screening for all men over 50. As a result of the publicity surrounding the interview, Health Secretary Wes Streeting has indicated that this will now happen. * Seven weeks before Mike Lynch and his daughter drowned, Danny Fortson was the only journalist to interview the tycoon after he was acquitted by a San Francisco court. Fortson then wrote superbly about the background to the yacht tragedy. He was also the only journalist to have access to the funeral in October from where he filed another moving dispatch. *Via Health Editor Shaun Lintern we revealed the truly horrific scandal at Great Ormond Street where 721 children had been potentially harmed by a rogue surgeon who carried out controversial operations to straighten limbs. *Exposed the way foreign students can gain hundreds of places at top universities by being offered lower grades. The Insight undercover report sparked a major inquiry by Universities UK. *On October 6, Caroline Wheeler wrote that Sue Gray was on her way out of Downing Street. Hours later she was fired.
Elsewhere, Style celebrated its 30th anniversary with a star-studded gala evening and four (count them) different Kylie covers! The magazine set new standards for long form journalism. Decca Aitkenhead didn't just land huge interviews - she also wrote incredible pieces on sibling sexual abuse, the scandal of a school in Jamaica where young American children were sent to be 'reeeducated', and devised her own smartphone experiment where she supervised the banning of devices for a group of teenagers.
In Comment, Matthew Syed's mini essays were a must read while Camilla Long's unique insight graced both the Democratic and Republican conventions. Culture remained the last word for big interviews. And we told the world first that Oasis were reforming and playing Wembley next year. Truly, journalism that makes a difference!