When Emma Tucker started as the Editor of The Sunday Times, she had a specific profile in mind when she thought about the newspaper’s typical reader: a suburban dentist in his 60s.

“He is the fabled Sunday Times reader I inherited three years ago when I took over the job,” she said. 

“I have absolutely nothing against dentists, we all need to get our teeth done. But the challenge was that his wife and children were not reading The Sunday Times,” Tucker said to the participants of WAN-IFRA’s World News Media Congress 2022 in Zaragoza.

However, when trying to widen the newspaper’s appeal to new audiences, she understood that there were “no magic tricks” she said – so for example just joining Snapchat or TikTok wouldn’t be a solution, at least on its own. 

Instead, the team decided to take several incremental steps, and aimed to expand the newspaper’s reach by focusing on three specific audiences.
Publishing flagship stories at the best moment
First, to better engage the people Tucker called “the bored Saturday audience,” the newspaper revamped its website strategy. She explained that The Sunday Times takes over The Times website on Saturdays and publishes new content at set times of the day.

But little thought used to go into what was published when, as new content was mostly added based on what happened to be ready.

The newsroom implemented a more planned publishing schedule, and nowadays exclusive stories and investigations are published at 6 pm on Saturda...