Description
The Daily Telegraph, known online as The Telegraph, is a national British daily broadsheet newspaper published in London by Telegraph Media Group and distributed across the United Kingdom and internationally.
It was founded by Arthur B. Sleigh in 1855 as Daily Telegraph & Courier. The Telegraph has been described as a newspaper of record and generally had an international reputation in the twentieth century for quality, described by Amol Rajan as "one of the world's great titles".
The paper's motto, "Was, is, and will be", appears in the editorial pages and has featured in every edition of the newspaper since 19 April 1858. The paper had a circulation of 363,183 in December 2018, descending further until it withdrew from newspaper circulation audits in 2019, having declined almost 80%, much faster than industry trends, from 1.4 million in 1980. Its sister paper, The Sunday Telegraph, which started in 1961, had a circulation of 281,025 as of December 2018. The Telegraph once had the largest circulation for a broadsheet newspaper in the UK, though that ended many years ago. The two sister newspapers are run separately, with different editorial staff, but there is cross-usage of stories.
The Telegraph has been the first newspaper to report on a number of notable news scoops, including the 2009 MP expenses scandal, which led to a number of high-profile political resignations and for which it was named 2009 British Newspaper of the Year, and its 2016 undercover investigation on the England football manager Sam Allardyce. However, critics, including the paper's former chief political commentator Peter Oborne, accuse it of being unduly influenced by advertisers, especially HSBC.
It was reported on 26 October 2019 that the owners of the Daily Telegraph and Sunday Telegraph were to put both titles up for sale following diminishing profit and circulation, after rumours of a sale had been denied for several years.
