The Times: tabloid in news values as well as size

This morning’s Times has an interview with Turkish Prime Minister Erdogan — not a bad journalistic commodity at a time when separatist Kurdish rebels killed at least 12 Turkish soldiers in an ambush near the Iraqi border and the drums of war are beating ever louder in Ankara.
 
Curiously, The Times could only find room on its front page for a 50-word write-off of its international scoop, demoting the main story to page 5. Instead, it chose to splash with yet another dubious story on childhood obesity.
 
Editor Robert Thomson is a serious, thoughtful man who has striven to keep his paper’s content serious even as it went tabloid in size. But when The Times chooses to lead with an insignificant development on child obesity in Britain rather than with its own scoop on globally-significant events in Turkey, then you know Rupert Murdoch’s tabloid values have won, not just when it comes to the paper’s size but, sadly, to its content as well.
 
Obesity sells papers, it must be assumed, especially in the middle market in which The Times now sadly dabbles; events in Turkey, presumably, don’t (at least until the shooting starts).
 
Interestingly, the international edition of The Times has a better sense of the paper’s historic traditions. “Turkey set to strike Iraq Kurds” is its page one splash (the obesity story demoted to page two). Perhaps those who want The Times the way it used to be (and still should be), should wait till they’re abroad and buy the international edition.