The Times Magazine

On February 12, 2022, the cover of The Times Magazine was a probing interview with Tony Blair on Boris, Keir, and the problem with politics now. On September 4, 2021, the cover was ‘My big day out with Bob’, a joyful piece in which comedian Bob Mortimer gave our beloved columnist Caitlin Moran a private tour of his home town. Those two very different issues are testament to the breadth of the magazine that currently holds the Press Award for Magazine of the Year.

Nicola Jeal’s promotion to Features and Lifestyle Director for The Times and The Sunday Times means she has taken on overall responsibility for all seven supplements, while remaining editor of The Times Magazine. This is proof not only of Jeal’s leadership, but also unparalleled knowledge of what readers want and what makes a good magazine. Every week, The Times Magazine is packed full of entertaining features, in-depth reporting, revealing profiles, humorous columns, recipes from Bake Off winners and top chefs, and the latest looks in fashion. The gold standard hasn’t slipped this year. Take the 14 May issue of this year, the cover – “Five rounds of IVF, one miscarriage and no baby: Emma Barnett on loss and infidelity”, the Woman’s Hour presenter’s moving account of the highs and lows of IVF. Inside you will find Jeremy Hunt, the former health secretary, on his plans to fix the NHS, celebrity DJ Fat Tony on surviving addictions to sex, drugs and drink as well as a report on how young people having easy access to extreme porn has affected their sex lives. You will also find Hilary McGrady on steering the National Trust through tough times, and the entrepreneurs behind the Glorify app revealing how they persuaded Hollywood to do God. To keep engaging with its readers and attracting new ones, the publication is constantly evolving. Jeal has adopted a new digital-first strategy to draw in fresh online readers. This means that select interviews and features are published online in the weekdays leading up to Saturday’s print magazine, which has increased their reach. We know this because our pieces now frequently trend on Apple News before their print publication. The most read article of the year, ‘Paulina Porizkova: the supermodel who dared to look her age’, was read by 408k online users. With award-winning interviewers and writers in its arsenal, the magazine profiles the biggest names in each industry. In film – Simon Pegg, Minnie Driver, Stanley Tucci, Emma Thomson; Sport – Tom Daley, Maro Itoje, Beth Mead; TV – Matthew Macfayden, Paul Hollywood, Piers Morgan; and politics – Tony Blair and Angela Rayner. The editor tweaks the magazine to be the best it can be by going through every detail, from these penetrating interviews to razor-sharp picture captions. The end result has the glossy feel and impressive photography of a monthly, combined with the news-reactive immediacy of a weekly.