Political inches
Sir: I hesitate to cross rulers with Paul Johnson (The press, 29 June), but he claimed that on a previous Tuesday the Times gave 'only 74 column inches to Parliament, of which 19 were consumed by a picture'. This is completely untrue. On the day he cites, we ran 157 column inches of political and parliamentary news, of which 120 could be called specifically parliamentary. (Both figures exclude a most distinguished portrait of Mr Jack Straw.) This was more than any other paper, as is the case most days. We do not compress all parliamentary news into a single page — apparently the source of Paul Johnson's error — and we give more coverage than formerly to committees. This surely reflects a shift in political activity from the chamber of the Commons to Westminster generally.
Simon Jenkins Editor, The Times, 1 Pennington Street, London El
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