03.17.05
Profile – Robert Thomson, editor of The Times
Caitlin Fitzsimmons
Robert Thomson is the first editor of The Times to have played Aussie Rules for St Kilda under-19s.
Then a cadet at the now-defunct Melbourne Herald, Thomson made the list pre-season and played practice games with the team before journalism intervened.
“Frankly I was never going to be good enough to make it at the highest level,” Thomson says. “There were so many more talented and committed individuals and I was trying to balance being a cadet journalist with as much training as I could do and it was never going to work.”
The boy from Christian Brothers College in St Kilda could not have foreseen quite how far he would go but the decision to concentrate on journalism has certainly paid off.
Robert Thomson (pic supplied by The Times) 
Foreign correspondent at 24. Foreign news editor for the Financial Times at 33 and editor-in-chief of that paper’s US operations at 37. Editor of The Times at 40.
But Thomson is unhappy at the prospect that his curriculum-vitae might engender a sense of inadequacy in others.
“Clearly, institutionally speaking the editor of The Times has overwhelming prestige but you would like to think that the little Australian in you keeps reminding you of the fact that firstly you’re fortunate and secondly that it’s an abuse if you don’t take advantage of that opportunity and use it to attempt either journalistically or socially to do some good,” Thomson says. “Young journalists shouldn’t imagine that the only measure of success is hierarchical.”
If nothing else, Thomson will be remembered as the editor who took The Times of London, one of the oldest and most influential broadsheets in the world, tabloid.
The decision to launch a compact edition – the term preferred by quality newspapers – in November 2003 came only after rival newspaper The Independent paved the way.
“In the years before I arrived there were two dummies prepared,” Thomson says. “It was always going to be difficult for us to go first, there was always going to be the risk of damage and that risk was far greater if The Times was the first broadsheet to turn tabloid in Britain.”
Circulation of The Times, which had been in steady decline, has leapt from 622,102 in November 2003 to 686,327 in January this year.
Thomson says this success is partly because of reader convenience – especially with the heavy commuter base in London – but also because a compact newspaper projects a less intimidating image.
“Each market has unique characteristics but there are clearly broader lessons for newspapers beyond the borders of Britain in the experience of The Times,” Thomson says.
None of this would have been possible without the support of the proprietor of The Times, Rupert Murdoch.
Thomson first met Murdoch when working for the FT in New York in the late 1990s. At the time of his appointment as editor of The Times in 2002, press reports noted that the two men have quite a bit in common; as well as being Australian, they have the same birthday and both men have Chinese wives and young children.
But Thomson is uncomfortable talking about his personal relationship with Murdoch.
“It’s a very profesional one [relationship],” Thomson says. “He’s extremely supportive of The Times … and that’s not just spoken support but that’s genuine financial support. Serious journalism is a very expensive business.”
The editorship of The Times could not have come at a better time for Thomson – he had recently missed out on becoming editor of the FT where he had worked for 17 years, despite being credited with revitalising the weekend edition and the success of the paper’s US venture.
Thomson says he harbours no hard feelings against his former employer, which is “just one of the papers against which we compete”. He adds mischievously, “the FT has many good journalists and we’ll eventually hire them.”
Thomson first moved abroad at the age of 24 when the Sydney Morning Herald sent him to Beijing to work in the bureau it then shared with the FT.
Since then he has lived in Tokyo, New York and Japan but has never returned to Australia to live.
Thomson says this is just the way things have worked out and he is open to the possibility of returning to Australia one day.
“I’ve kept my Australian passport and my children travel on an Australian passport so whether it’s an artificial connection or not, to me it emotionally feels real,” Thomson says.
An edited version of this article was first published in The Australian on 7 March 2005, in Worldwide. Copyright is held by Caitlin Fitzsimmons.
