Spectator

The Spectator’s figures are out today, and I’m delighted to say that they show sales growing at their fastest rate in ten years — driven by our new digital formats. The above chart shows how things are moving. I thought CoffeeHousers might like to know a bit more about how we in 22 Old Queen St see it all. The magazine industry, like the rest of print, is going through something of a revolution. Readers are migrating to digital alternatives like Kindle, as there is no waiting for delivery. Kindle addicts like having their magazines and newspapers waiting for them in their pocket, available to read any time. As our readers changed, so has

The Spectator‘s cover, a few weeks ago, borrowed one of The Sun‘s most famous headlines: ‘Gotcha’ — but, this time, with tabloid journalists caught in the trap. It was supposed to be a parody. But, this weekend, the Metropolitan Police arrested a further five journalists from The Sun using methods normally meted out to drug dealers: pulling them out of their beds, searching their houses for concealed evidence. No one has been charged, but all five are suspected of paying sources for information: i.e. ‘aiding and abetting misconduct in a public office … and conspiracy in relation to both these offences.’ If the definition of bribery extends to buying sources outrageously-priced

There have been precious few people able to make sense of the crash. The main commentators didn’t see it coming — and so have focused their energies stressing how no man born of woman could have predicted it. But Nassim Taleb did. He has been a voice of sense, originality and common sense throughout, and David Cameron has been listening. The respect is mutual: Taleb even described Cameron as ‘the best hope we have left on this planet’ because he understood the dangers of deficits. If CoffeeHousers haven’t come across Taleb’s books, such as Fooled by Randomness and Black Swan, I can’t recommend them enough. I met him recently, and

The Sunday Times lists the ‘Top 500 Apps in the world’ (£) today, and I’m pleased to say that The Spectator’s brand new app ranks no.4 in its ‘news apps’ category. The newspaper describes the list as ‘the good, the mad and lovely’ and ours emerges as little of all three. What we have sought to do with the new app is combine our blogs and the magazine, and we are (I think) the first magazine to do so. The Sunday Times gives it the thumbs-up. It ranks us behind its own app, and those of the BBC and Sky News. Here’s its verdict: ‘The contents page may be slightly

A quick post to wish CoffeeHousers a very happy New Year, and to thank you for reading and commenting in 2011. The blog may be a bit quieter over the next day or two (although there will be some posts); but, rest assured, we’ll come roaring back to normal service early next week. In the meantime, there’s still time to enter our New Year competition. Or how about sifting back through the ten ‘most-read’ articles from all across the website this year? Here are the links: 1) What the papers won’t say — Peter Oborne 2) The footballer is named — Alex Massie 3) More like Veena, please — Nick Cohen 4)

Christmas is but a day away, and with it a chance to remember when British and German troops clambered out of the trenches to declare impromptu ceasefires in December 1914. CoffeeHousers are no doubt familiar with the specifics: how the Germans started by singing carols, and finished off (according to some letters from the time) by beating our soldiers 3-2 in a game of football. But I thought you still might care to see how The Spectator wrote it up a week later. So here is the brief report that appeared in the ‘News of the Week’ section of our 2 January issue, 1915: ‘The news from the western theatre

A brief post to let CoffeeHousers know that the blog will be going a bit quieter over the next few days. We hope you have a very happy and peaceful Christmas. Coffee House won’t fall completely silent, though. Tune in over the weekend for the occasional post and selections from The Spectator archives. And there’s our ongoing Christmas competition here. We’ll be back, proper, early next week.

Keen-sighted Spectator readers may have noticed that there was no ‘Barometer’ column in our Christmas double issue. The weekly column, which features topical, little observations and statistics, had to be pulled because of space restrictions. But no such restrictions on the Internet, of course — so we thought CoffeeHousers might care to see some of the festive factoids we had poised to print. Among them were the poll findings shown in the chart above: only 12 per cent of people regard the religious significance of Christmas as its most important component. And here are more for you to mull over, collected from various YouGov surveys: This Christmas, 31 per cent