The editor of The Times, James Harding, resigned after becoming aware that he no longer enjoyed the confidence of Rupert Murdoch. John Witherow, the long-serving editor of The Sunday Times, is the front-runner to be appointed editor of The Times. News Corporation is reported to have taken legal advice on whether it could merge the two newspapers into a more economic seven-day operation. During the Harding era broadsheet newspaper circulations have collapsed:

When he bought the paper in 1981 Rupert Murdoch gave an undertaking “to preserve the separate identities of The Times and The Sunday Times.” Given that The Times is losing nearly a million pounds a week that is an undertaking that is no longer viable in the digital age. In the circumstances the government is unlikely to stand in the way of a rationalisation of the papers into a 7-day operation, like its tabloid sister The Sun…