What would you like to see happen to The Telegraph's Comment pages?

Many congratulations to Iain Martin.  Iain has been appointed the new 'Head of Comment and Community' at The Telegraph.  This involves responsibility for overseeing comment on the Daily and Sunday newspapers plus all of the community blogging.  He's a great guy and we wish him luck.  We certainly hope he prospers - there have been, we think, eight comment editors at The Telegraph in as many years (and the inconsistency has been very evident).

Iain Martin won't be short of advice over the coming weeks but let's use this thread to get the advice going.

The temptation will be to dumb down - like the rest of the newspaper.  Our principal hope would that that would be resisted.  We'd like to see The Telegraph's Comment pages become the home of British conservatism (note the small 'c').  They should be pages alive with discussion about reclaiming powers from Europe, how to improve our nation's schools, how to lower the tax burden and about distinctively conservative solutions to poverty.  They should be articles linked to campaigns.  The internet is dissolving the walls between what is a newspaper, a campaign organisation and a political party.  Let's see The Telegraph lead the way through those changes.  In short Telegraph Comment should play the role that The Wall Street Journal's 'Opinion Journal' has played for the American conservative movement.  For years The Telegraph was the Conservative Party's in-house journal.  With party politics in retreat and single issue politics growing, it should become the home of small 'c' conservative thinking.  Give the Barclay Brothers something to be proud of - a jewel in the crown of campaigning opinion journalism.

The thought-leaders of British conservatism should regularly populate the comment pages: David Green, Allister Heath, Jill Kirby, Douglas Murray, Ruth Lea included.

Use the Comment pages to engage with the culture wars.  Peter Whittle of the New Culture Forum would be perfect for that task.

Other advice to Iain: Please try and get Mark Steyn back and see if you can poach James Forsyth and Fraser Nelson from The Spectator.

In other media news: Jenny Scott is leaving The Daily Politics to become Head of Press at the Bank of England.

Comments

[Umbrella man]

Definitely agree about Mark Steyn and Fraser Nelson.

They are the best journalists on the right.

Could Michael Gove be lured from The Times?

[Tony Makara]

More gravitas is definitely needed. I used to take the Telegraph everyday in the days of Max Hastings, now I only ever buy the FT and IHT when I can find it! A paper that dumbs down can never educate its readership. Let the Telegraph be an uplifting experience, not another nosedive into mediocrity.

[Nigel Syson]

A good start would be no more articles by Gordon Brown in the paper - particularly ones when he writes about courage given his record of defence cuts.

[Alan S]

Telegraph Television's RightOn needs to be less shallow.

Guy Ruddle's interview of Charles Moore last week was real poor.

Anybody with an understanding of Thatcherism knows that her greatest appeal was with Essex man etc, not the toffs yet Ruddle asked if she had appeal beyond people like Moore. Risible.

He also said that Mrs Thatcher said there was "no such thing as community". At least get the misrepresentation of her right.

[CCHQ Spy]

Get Dominic Lawson and Bruce Anderson back. Both are wasted at The Indy.

[David Sergeant]

Can we just have more responsibility instead of rather childish rightwing extremism and breathless craven repeats of Labour spin.

[Adam Johns]

Make it like a centre-right Comment Is Free. I love the Guardian's online layout even if the people suck.

[Jack]

Mark Steyn 100%!

[john]

"Get Dominic Lawson and Bruce Anderson back. Both are wasted at the Indy".
And get them preaching to the converted?

[Pete]

Load of tosh most of it (I exclude Heffer). I suppose it's obvious, but the journalism is just there as a convenient filler to go round the advertising - and what the hell is 'Community'? (What possible use could journalists prepared to work for the Independent be?)

[Simon Chapman]

Agreed this is excellent news - Iain's is a consistent and robust voice of reason on the right.

I would echo all the Editor's advice (especially Mark Steyn) and add that the Telegraph should introduce some conservative perspectives from the rest of the world as well. Not just the anglosphere, but authentic conservative voices from Europe and elsewhere.

[Dave B]

Small technical glitch with the Telegraph blogs.

Attempts to use the 'email this page' feature, or to register to comment (which involves being sent an email) fail. I suspect this is due to a misconfigured email server.

[Dave B]

Mr Martin was one of the speakers at the CPS "Politics, Policy & The Internet Seminar", an MP3 is available for download.

[Christina Speight]

The Telegraph is the best of the bunch by far! I digest and report from ALL the nationals and I find that about 45% of my stories originate from the Telegraph. The Business News is superb with Ambrose Evans-Pritchard, Jeff Randall (both get into the main paper's Comments too), Damian Preece are unsurpassed anywhere, far better than the lefty FT.

What changes? More emphasis on getting Cameron's party to behave and think intelligently like Tories - less government especially from Brussels; lower taxes; proper defences and restoration of the power of parliament over the dreadful Human Rights Convention. ("Humans" doesn't seem to include the British). Drop all the politically correct obeissance to leftish philosophy.

[Kate Bollinger]

Good call on Mark Steyn.
I don't think I'm the only one to infer from this post that CH is now the journal of the Con Party so the Telegraph has to make its way as the home of conservatISM.

[YOUNG CONSERVATIVE]

sack heffer he's a fossil. try and get nelson, gove maybe anatole koletsky as well.

[Matt Wright]

I used to get the DT religiously every day but it just seems to have lost it. Its been going down hill for a while and can't seem to decide which way to go. One minute its right wing reactionary, next minute running Govt spin, sometimes its both at the same time which makes me laugh. Maybe more of us have just moved on now and it hasn't. I don't know exactly what it is but I don't seem to identify with it anymore.

[Harry]

Please for the love of God take Janet Daly, Irwin Seltzer and all the other dreadful old NeoCon imports and have them sent to the Journalist Sanctuary.

Then assemble a group of committed rightist freelance Journos along side a good quality small team of politically stable staffers (extreme Libertarian to wishy-washy weak tree hugger Cameron supporters), give them free reign , expand the letters page (perhaps shoot Craig Brown?? Get rid of thew appallingly dated "Spy" column???) and hey presto - a 'true Voice for the Right' to counter the pernicious and all pervasive influence of the Guardian among the chattering classes.

[Sammy Finn]

We should have fewer articles by Tory politicians spouting the party line and more honest wrestling with the real problems facing Britain.

[Victor, NW Kent]

After 50 years as a reader I stopped taking the Telegraph. Too much of it is trivial and ultra rightwing dinosaurs dominate the political columns. That is, except for the couple who are apologists for Gordon Brown.

It should decide whether it is to be a conservative newspaper or a daily magazine for the chatterati.

[alex]

Ditch Simon Heffer's appalling childish and nasty columns. Definitely get back Mark Steyn and bring in Fraser Nelson. Danny Finkelstein and Matthew Parris are also engaging writers.

No reason not to have lighter writers as well for contrast - Caitlin Moran at The Times is a very good non-political columnist.

Agree that more world affairs would be useful...a persistent conservative commentary on what's happening in Asia would be interesting as so much of our economic future is tied up with its fate.

Finally a plea. I read The Times because I live in London and commute by tube. I cannot read the Telegraph (which I would prefer) on my journey because it is just too unwieldy. A tabloid or Berliner sized edition would be of great help - it doesn't have to smack of dumbing down....

[Mike T]

I miss Boris most, always a tour-de-force through the classics and then right to the nub of the matter. A joy to read.

I don't like Heffer's three year sulk about our leader and neither do I enjoy Heffer's continual posturing as the country's only Gladstonian commentator which makes him even more a throwback that he seems.

More Iain Dale please, definitely bring back Mark Steyn and keep John Kampfner always brings out my righteous indignation and reminds me just how intellectual bankrupt the left really are.

[Rick]

Bring back Mark Steyn.

[powellite]

Get rid of Simon Heffer and send him to Siberia where he belongs

[Craig Barrett]

Fraser Nelson is a brilliant writer as is Iain Martin himself.

Lose Simon Heffer - send him back to the Mail where he belongs. His weekly stream of vitriol does the Telegraph no favours.

[Mark Hudson]

I think that the DT is just fine as it is. This may come as a shock to those Cameron supporters who reside solely in nice liberal metropolitan areas, but there are a hell of a lot of real Conservatives who don't like where the party is (witness the collapse in membership in even safe seats).

Many will hold their nose and vote for Dave and Gideon because they detest Brown and all his works (entirely understandable I know), but there are many of us who feel disenfranchised at the profound NewLab:BlueLab similarities. It's quite nice having a newspaper that speaks for us.

[HF]

I have stopped reading the Telegraph on a Daily basis because of its anti-Conservative party stance.

It is far too close to Labour and employing left wing hacks and far right UKIP supporters creates an environment where the Conservative party is regularly under attack.

Alas on the doorstep it (and the Mail) has cost us 2% to 3% of our support, thank god Brown is so awful.

[Richard Tyndall]

They should stop messing around with trying to hide away Chris Boookers column. He is one of the few remaining reasons for reading the Sunday Telegraph and is often a lone voice of common sense in a sea of politically correct soft centre right garbage that fills the rest of the Sunday edition.

In the last year it has become increasingly difficult to actually read his column online as it is no longer linked from the front page and on occasion not even from the comments pages.

Booker, along with Ambrose Evans-Pritchard, Jeff Randall and Simon Heffer are just about the only thing keeping me reading the Telegraph.

Coming from a newspaper family (working for rather than just reading) I also understand that since the Sunday edition moved left its circulation has plummeted so there is a financial incentive to move back to its natural readership on the right.

[Christina Speight]

Harry @03.55 Spy hasn't been there for weeks - Mandrake has taken its place. So your criticisms can't be very informed!!!

KEEP Daly, Ruth Lea, Heffer, Randall, Evans-Pritchard

SACK the dreadful NuLabourite Mary Riddell (see what rubbish she writes today)

DON"T GET Gove, or the wildly unstable Kaletsky,

SACK THE LETTERS EDITOR Totally dumbed down now and obsessed with trivia., The Editor doesn't do his job for they print letters with factual inaccuracies without bothering to check them. I don't mind ones I disagree with provided the argument is logical and the facts accurate. As a daily they should cultivate reasoned debate over time. Too many of the letters are one-offs or - even worse - written by committees!

[john]

Get rid of Mary Riddell. She's written another pro-Brown, anti-Cameron piece today.
She belongs in the Mirror or Guardian.

[Silver Blaze]

Well that's gotta make depressing reading for da Fink & his unregarded op-ed pages.

[pauline buffham ~ now thankfully ex pat]

Simon Heffer must stay...as must Janet Daly. We TRUE Conservatives must have someone to speak for us, and those two in particular do so brilliantly.

After reading today's nauseating pro Brown rubbish by Mary Riddell it is eveident that she should go as should Rachel Sylvester

[Parliamentary Insider]

Under the Barclays, the Telegraph is making a dash for the Mail's readership and has been turned into a complete joke of a paper. (Private Eye have been following Will Lewis' attempt to run it down into a rag for some time).

It was always a bit daffy domesticcally, but at least it had the merit of excellent international coverage.

Now that has gone too.

Dale, Daly and Heffer? Complete wastes of space.

The FT's editorial line is a bit europhile, but it remains the best all-round newspaper.

Of the rest, The Times has lost its edge on news coverage, but it has the best range of commentators.

[Malcolm Dunn]

I think it's OK as it is. The Telegraph is not meant to be the mouthpiece of any particular wing or viewpoint of the party and the fact that its unpredictable is for me part of its appeal.
Surely the criteria for hiring journalists is that they can write well written, inteesting articles not that parrot views that I agree with.

[Parliamentary Insider]

Incidentally, why would the Barclay brothers want a campaigning paper?

They can have a high-volume downmarket rag.

[ramsay]

No more neo-Cons or delusionists still trying to claim the iraq war was a good idea!

[Simon Denis]

The Telegraph has lost a lot of its edge since the good old days of Conrad Black. It has been diluted by an influx of softy lefties, going so far as to publish the harrumphing Europhil rubbish of Denis Macshane, for heaven's sake. I liked being able to extend my copy of the Telegraph like a comfort blanket of tory truth over the ugly horizon of our left wing circumstances. Perhaps this is no longer possible. Since the fall of the Berlin Wall, the various right wings have fallen out with each other. You've got neo-cons and euronuts; paleo-cons and classical liberals; Old Wets and Old Maggie Men - difficult to please such a diverse constituency; difficult to come up with a jolly old comfort blanket. But I miss it.

[Parliamentary Insider]

"Surely the criteria for hiring journalists is that they can write well written, inteesting articles not that parrot views that I agree with."

What he said.

But then, I don't think Daly, Dale or Heffer make that mark.

[London Tory]

The Telegraph's target readership reminds me of Malcolm Rifkind's quote about his old marginal seat in Edinburgh Pentlands;

"I am burying my majority at the rate of 3 a week".

[Alex Deane]

as many here have written, IMHO the key to improving the Telegraph's comment section would be securing the return of Mark Steyn.

[Christina Speight]

Mary Riddell has got a bad press here but- 0 ye Gods! - see the readers reactions in the Telegraph itself. Acres of them and barely a couple with a good word to say for her.

A QUERY - Is she by any chance related to the equally dreadful PETER Riddell, political editor of The Times... ???

They both are NuLabour to the core while pretending impartiality.

[ChrisD]

I stopped getting the Telegraph a few years ago, I used to have it ordered at the local newsagents to make sure I got it. It seems to be a prerequisite that the journalists are in particular not great fans of the present Conservative leadership, fair enough, but you lose any sense of a political balance.
I don't care that its not the Torygraph anymore as long as it could provide good, wide and balanced coverage of politics and world events in particular.
Now its the Times for me, its not perfect, but it offers the nearest thing to the old Telegraph.

Now the Telegraph has become the UKIPPER with a few new faces that come from the New Labour stable. Why anyone thought that moving against the tide to express a minority view would be anything other than a disaster is beyond me.
And reading through the comments on this thread in support of the Telegraph remaining in its current format, the irony is not lost on me.
I know that all the papers are having to change and modernise, get in touch with their feminine side etc etc, But people buy the mail for that, people buy the Telegraph for that old fashioned concept, the news.

It would have been interesting to see what Dominic Lawson would have done with the Daily Telegraph given the chance a few years ago.

[Derek W. Buxton]

It has without doubt drifted away from the expectations of the core Telegraph reader over the last few years. It also condones the mysterious silence over the EU, with the honourable exception of Mr. Booker. They do on occasion hide his column, or did until he reached the Comments section recently. I do wonder how long this will continue.

[John Broughton]

Some of my Guardian reading friends keep asking me why the Telegraph consistently features (OK there are a few exceptions)a pretty (that's subjective!) woman and when it will feature boobs on page 3.

I'd buy the Sun if that was what I wanted!

On a more serious note the problem is that the paper has become a lightweight apart from one or two reasonable comment style articles some days. What I want is more main stream conservatism like Heffer, Daly, Randall and Evans-Pritchard.

Could we add Nelson, Steyn, Lea and Paris for starters?

[Steveb]

Does anyone still read this ridiculous paper? News is worse than the daily mail, sport is rubbish and comment full of irrelevant people like Heffer and Dale or pisspoor pinkos like Riddell.

There is far better comment and news online. And if you need a paper, I think the Indy has far better comment with a clever range of voices plus the likes of Steve Richards (lefty but essential), Dominic Lawson, Michael Brown, Simon Carr and Brucie Anderson (right-thinking people, all of them). Guardian and Times far better for news and sport - and Times has Parris and Finklestein on its otherwise pretty crap comment pages - also than absurd downmarket rag that is the Telegraph today. Only thing worth reading in it is Jeff Randall.

[Eileen R]

As a Canadian who is enjoying reading Mark Steyn again in Canada (his real home), I say bring Steyn back to the Telegraph too! I'm missing his view of British politics, odd as that sounds. I registered to read the Telegraph just for that, and then they drop him, and send me lots of spam trying to sell me booze and cruises.

[Dominic Harvey]

More people like Heffer and Randall. Right On needs to be less tacky.

[Mike T]

Steveb,

You are kidding, the Indy? Thanks for giving me the best laugh of the day.

As for Sport in the Telegraph, you've never read Henry Winter after a night of Liverpool performing another night of miraculous European football? Almost as good as watching it.

[John F Aberdeen]

I,ve been wondering if the DT has a cunning plan that makes all socialist hating people long for the elections so we can vote out Bottler and his Nulab gang of v****n.
Almost every day we have some NuLab goon spouting off his, or her rubbish, usually that grinning fool Dennis McShane, my DT gets wet with spit when I see him.
On Monday Brian Wilson, Bottler himself and the crowning glory today, Mary Riddle wanting people to lay of Brown.
Judging by the thousands of negative, comments left by people, including myself, below their Nulab rubbish it appears the DT winding up is working.
Personally after I read the Nulab rubbish in the DT my first reaction is to swear in disgust and contempt, frankly it wouldn,t take much persuasion for me to get armed along with others and do some serious damge to Nulab and its supporters like Mary Riddle and judging by todays reaction she got well and truly riddled.
The writers I enjoy reading in the DT are Jeff Randall (please DC and GO get him on your economics team) Janet Daley and Charles Moore. Heffer is ok but too much of a puritan,, almost a right wing opposite to Brown.
The writers I would like to see on DT, Mark Steyn, and most of the writers like Fraser Nelson from the Spectator. Also, please bring back Max Hastings,, the DT went down market after he left.
Like most others on here I also deplore the dumbing down and indulging in the trivia normally associated with down market tabloids

[ChrisD]

"You are kidding, the Indy? Thanks for giving me the best laugh of the day."

Don't laugh, my very Thatcherite other half reckons its the best of the broadsheets at the moment.

[gadfly]

The comment stream on this issue is very revealing. Look how worked up all the bloggers get about the Telegraph. It just shows how out of touch all these political junkies are. Beyond this politics obsessed group, the rest of the country gets its politics from the TV, particularly the BBC. It might be a better discussion if people learned a little more about the producers and editors of the news and current affairs programmes on the BBC, particularly what their political opinions are. They have more influence on the way people see the political parties than any newspaper does. Very few read any of the political commentary in the papers, if they even get a paper and next to no one takes any interest in the Westminster insider stories the newspapers are obsessed with.

[Anthony Broderick]

Hire Steyn
Hire Parris
Hire the CH editors

Keep the leader columns consistent.

And I agree with the person who commented on the all of the pictures of women!

[Patsy Sergeant]

I agree with 'john' @ 10.40 - about Mary Riddell, her articles are so obviously heavily biased in favour of Mr. Brown, that it seems to me that it is fairly obvious she is on personal terms with him, nothing wrong with that of course, but because of that her journalistic/political approach to the Opposition can be misleading if not inaccurate!

In today's article, two thirds of which was interesting, as soon as she got onto the subject of David Cameron the trickle of acid appeared! Ms Riddell, must know that interviewers - especially in the BBC - have control of what questions are asked when a politician - or anybody else for that matter - is being interviewed. But no!, she trivialises Mr. Cameron's choice of subjects in her usual snide way.