What were The Times thinking?

Editor James Harding’s quick step – removing a traditional slice of humour from The Times – gets a ZERO from media judge Raymond Snoddy …

As the jazzers were enjoying their wallop there should have been a small wake over at The Times for the People column, which has been summarily executed by editor James Harding.

Diary columns are in danger of becoming an endangered species. The Observer pulled the plug on its media diary a few months ago.  There is the problem of increased competition from the internet and the endless tweets on Twitter.

Yet done well, and that usually means conducted with a sharp edge, diary columns can often be some of the best-read parts of a newspaper. Londoner’s diary, in the Evening Standard, if it managed to get over its obsession with listing the attendees at book launch parties would fall into that category.

Partly the issue may be expense. The diary editor traditionally has to issue “bribes” of bottles of champagne or modest additional payments to get the hacks to come up with the goods.  In a recession pages for news are also at a premium.

But Harding has apparently cited another reason for dumping the diary.  According to a Times “source” one of the reasons is that “there is a war on in Afghanistan and a recession and the positive light-hearted column didn’t seem to fit.”  The precise opposite is true. Because there is a war in Afghanistan and a recession the need for some humour to alleviate the gloom is so much greater.

A big fat zero for James Harding for arbitrarily removing an essential component of a newspaper for so little good reason.