The Coventry Telegraph is a local English tabloid newspaper. It was founded as The Midland Daily Telegraph in 1891 by William Isaac Iliffe, and was Coventry's first daily newspaper. Sold for half a penny, it was a four-page broadsheet newspaper. It changed its name to the Coventry Evening Telegraph on 17 November 1941, and then the Coventry Telegraph on 2 October 2006. The newspaper became a part of the then Mirror Group, in 1997. In April 2015, the publication had a paid daily circulation of just over 18,000 copies. Trinity Mirror is now known as Reach plc. Historical copies of the Coventry Telegraph, dating back to 1914, are available to search and view in digitised form at the British Newspaper Archive.
History
The only day the newspaper was unable to publish was 15 November 1940, owing to the blitz raid on the city. From 1946 until the end of April 2004, a separate sports publication, The Pink, was printed every Saturday evening. It provided coverage of sport from the Midlands, as well as national and international sport. The fortunes of Coventry City F.C. played a prominent role in The Pink'. With the 1998-99 football season, The Pink became the first regional evening newspaper to provide same day reports from all FA Premiership matches. In 2016, Coventry Telegraph launched a new weekly podcast, centred around goings on at Coventry City F.C., titled 'The Pink'. The headquarters for a significant period of the paper's history was at 157 Corporation Street, Coventry, CV1 1FP. The foundation stone was laid by the then proprietor, Lord Iliffe G.B.E, on 21 November 1957. In the 1970s, the Evening Telegraph had a regular consumer page called Watchdog, which was edited by Ken Burgess. Subsequently, the BBC used the same name for what became its long-running Watchdog series. In 1985, the local independent radio station and the Telegraph formed the Snowball Appeal, a charitable organisation whose aim is to raise money to help sick and needy children in Coventry and Warwickshire. After 96 years of ownership by the Illife Family, American Ralph Ingersoll II bought the controlling interest of the Iliffe family's newspapers. However, in 1991, the managing director, Chris Oakley, led a management buy-out creating Midland Independent Newspapers. In 1997, Midland Independent Newspapers was sold for £297 million to Mirror Group. In 1999, Mirror Group merged with the regional newspaper group Trinity. From 2 October 2006, the publication changed from an evening paper to a morning paper. To reflect this change, the newspaper's name changed to Coventry Telegraph. The switch to a morning paper saw a change in emphasis with the printed edition concentrating on exclusive and community news, leaving breaking news to its website. In the summer of 2012, the paper moved its headquarters to Thomas Yeoman House at Coventry Canal Basin, in Leicester Row. The decision by the proprietors was a consequence of the changing patterns of work at the paper. With the number of staff reduced and no longer needing the space for the discontinued printing presses, it was decided that a smaller, more modern headquarters was now necessary. In May 2017 the Corporation Street site was opened to the public so they could view it almost as it had been left when it closed. When the exhibition ends in July 2018 Complex Developments Ltd hope to turn the buildings into a 100-bed hotel. In the summer of 2014, the newspaper began a social media campaign entitled #bringCityhome, which helped ensure Coventry City F.C.'s return to the city following their exile at Sixfields in Northampton. The campaign drew praise from national media and figures within the football world. It was shortlisted at the Press Gazette British Journalism Awards 2014 in the Campaign of the Year category and Simon Gilbert, who spearheaded the campaign, was nominated for Sports Journalist of the Year.
Editors
Current Editor-in-Chief
The current Editor-in-chief of the Coventry Telegraph and CoventryLive is Graeme Brown. He has been in post since November 2019, joining from Reach PLC Midlands stablemate BirminghamLive. Starting his career at The Sentinel in Stoke-on-Trent, he has previously served as interim editor of the Birmingham Post and executive editor of the Birmingham Mail. He recently launched Black Country Live, the Reach PLC team focused on growth in Walsall, Wolverhampton, Sandwell and Dudley.
Past editors
Below is an incomplete list of editors of the Coventry Telegraph and Coventry Evening Telegraph:
