Times editor Tony Gallagher speaking at the Society of Editors Future of News Conference on Tuesday 17 March 2026. Picture: Lucy Young
Times editor Tony Gallagher has revealed revenue from digital subscribers is now more than covering the cost of the combined Times and Sunday Times newsrooms.
The Times and Sunday Times had 659,000 digital subscribers at the end of 2025 , up 7% compared to a year earlier and double where it was five years ago. Digital-only access costs between £20 and £30 per month.
Gallagher said about a third (214,000) of those subscribers had been added since he became editor in September 2022 .
Gallagher, also a former editor of The Daily Telegraph and The Times’ News UK stablemate The Sun, was speaking at the Society of Editors Future of News Conference on Tuesday as he picked up the Fellowship Award.
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Gallagher said the subscriber growth at The Times demonstrates that there is “strong demand for high-quality journalism in the digital era”.
He added: “Crucially, the revenue generated by these digital subscribers now more than covers the cost of the combined Times and Sunday Times newsrooms, some 700 journalists, showing how far we’ve moved away from reliance on print.
“I also want to thank Rupert Murdoch, Lachlan Murdoch, [News Corp CEO] Robert Thomson and my boss [News UK CEO] Rebekah Brooks for their tireless support. None of this would have been possible without their backing and, crucially, Rupert Murdoch’s decision to pioneer a paywall in 2010.
“Thanks to them, we are in healthy financial shape, but it wasn’t always thus, and hundreds of millions of pounds were lost in the past. I cannot think of any other proprietor who have sustained these losses over that many years.”
Times Newspapers reported profit of £61m on turnover of £383m in 2024 .
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Gallagher outlined some of the biggest challenges facing editors including from Government and, he said, the press regulator IPSO. He was one of many UK newspaper editors and other senior media figures who signed a letter to Sir Keir Starmer in January urging him to take action on SLAPPs – unfounded lawsuits that target journalists and others in order to silence public interest reporting.
“Routinely in government, we see obstructions of basic FOI requests,” Gallagher said. “Members of my staff, it turned out, were on special blacklists, so their requests attract an entire layer of obstructive bureaucracy. It took years by the likes of our defence correspondent Larisa Brown and other fine journalists to dismantle the wall of secrecy surrounding the failure to protect tens of thousands of Afghans from the vengeance of the Taliban.
“This government, like the last one, is unable to outlaw pernicious use of SLAPPs, yet it has found time to produce troubling guidelines about what can be said about one religion. And how long, I wonder, before IPSO decides it needs to adopt this new code of conduct in its rulings.
“The regulator has, in my view, gone far beyond its brief in trying to regulate comment or factual pieces it does not like.”
In 2023 IPSO found a Jeremy Clarkson column in The Sun had made “pejorative and prejudicial reference” to Meghan Markle’s gender. Among critics of the ruling were a leader column by The Times which said the “ill-judged ruling should concern all defenders of a free press”. Then-Spectator editor Fraser Nelson, now a Times columnist, accused IPSO of censoring opinion.
Further criticism followed in 2024 as IPSO ruled against Reach website Aberdeen Live for including a “detailed description” of a rape victim’s physical reaction to the attack against her, as described by the prosecutor of the case in court. The Times, The Sun and The Telegraph were among those arguing this took IPSO into the territory of making judgments that should be up to editors.
An IPSO spokesperson told Press Gazette in response to Gallagher’s comments: “IPSO’s purpose is to protect both the public and freedom of expression. We believe that these are mutually reinforcing principles. Accountability for decision-making remains with editors.
“The standards that IPSO applies in ruling on complaints about editorial decision-making are those of the Editors’ Code of Practice. It was originally written by editors and is currently overseen by a committee that retains a large editorial majority.
“We understand that our decisions are subject to scrutiny and challenge and would not expect otherwise.”
However, Gallagher said the media’s “biggest enemy” is “inertia”.
“The newspapers, the media organisations that will survive and thrive will be those who focus on giving their readers tremendous value, day in, day out. What that value consists of will, for sure, change over time, but the core challenge remains the same: obsessing about what it means to produce journalistic excellence.”
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