The Sunday Times is recruiting journalists and online developers ahead of the launch of its stand-alone website.
Sunday Times content is currently published on Times Online. According to reports in June, the News International broadsheet is considering charging for the site. The Financial Times is the only UK national newspaper currently charging for online content.
The Sunday Times is currently recruiting an interactive editor, news journalist, communities editors and further journalists for the culture and style sections.
It is also recruiting a developer with experience of working on the web-platform which the Sunday Times is using – Escenic – as well as flash designers.
The new site looks set to have a strong emphasis on interactive and reader-generated content.
In a job advert published in The Guardian today, The Sunday Times says that the new communities editors will be required to “integrate editorial with promotional content” and “curate specialist vertical topic pages and manage third-party content feeds”.
The launch of a stand-alone Sunday Times website underlines News International’s contrasting approach to national newspaper publishing.
The Telegraph Group, Independent Newspapers and Guardian News and Media have merged their daily and Sunday newspapers online – and largely integrated their daily and Sunday editorial teams. But News International’s Sun, News of the World, Sunday Times and Times remain complete editorial independence from each other.
During a conference call to discuss News Corporation‘s third quarter results in May, chairman Rupert Murdoch said the company was “absolutely” looking at charging people to read his UK national newspapers online.
He said: “You can expect to see something in the next 12 months. We are planning to introduce a pay model across all our properties but we will test it first on some of our stronger properties.”
In June, Times Online was the fifth most popular UK national newspaper website behind the The Sun, Guardian, Telegraph and Daily Mail.
In June Times Online reported 21.2 million unique users compared with Telegraph.co.uk on 27.2 million and the Mail Online which was in first place on 29.3 million.
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