Less for Moore

The 'best-selling' Daily Telegraph has scored its lowest recorded sales figures. Disappointing? No, rather a relief, the editor, Charles Moore, tells Ian Burrell

It is five o'clock on Friday afternoon, and Charles Moore, editor of The Daily Telegraph, has just received his copy of the monthly circulation figures. They show that the Telegraph's average sale in March was 926,500 – the paper's lowest figure on record and down 7.6 per cent on last year. For a paper that for years crowed over its unique ability within the broadsheet market to shift more than one million copies, the latest ABC bulletin should have been a depressing sight.

But Moore is not despondent. Rather, he has the optimistic air of someone who is finally getting something off his chest. The fact is, he admits, that the Telegraph never really did sell those million copies anyway. "I think that people tend to attach too much importance to a headline figure, and the trouble with that is that you start to try to achieve the figure by artificial means," he says. "The difficulty with concentrating on a figure like that is that you then start to do things that are sort of manipulations. They are not lies but they are a waste of time and money and mental energy."

In his eighth year at the helm of the Telegraph, Moore now feels confident enough not to have to inflate the paper's sale to the magic million. "The million circulation for The Daily Telegraph is a simple concept that people can grasp, but it's not relevant for advertisers," he says. "What is relevant for advertisers is our market, rather than whether we sell a million or not." And so, out go the freebies, the bulk-sale giveaways that are handed out at hotels and railway stations and in special offers. As Moore points out, "virtually every newspaper" uses bulk sales to increase its circulation and promote its product to new readers. The Telegraph's decision to slash its bulk sale from more than 60,000 to about 15,000 was a policy that "requires a bit of guts" but was "entirely logical" and is now complete.

"The circulation is now a real circulation, which most of the other papers – The Times, for example – don't pursue," says Moore, arguing that "figures should be real". But it is clear that the move is less cathartic than strategic; it not only frees up resources for editorial and advertising budgets, but allows the Telegraph to occupy the moral high ground as a non-discounted, top-of-the-range product. "Fundamentally, we are saying: 'We are supreme in product, with a premium price. We are not giving it away free with your breakfast in a Thistle hotel. We are doing everything we can to make it as good as we can – and that's worth paying 55p for,'" explains Moore.

In actual fact, the Telegraph has not abandoned bulks entirely – free copies will continue to be dished out to air passengers. "People expect their newspapers on the airline, and it's a very good way of sampling if you are on a long-haul flight," Moore concedes. And the loss of bulk sales doesn't account for the 20,000 fall in circulation since the start of the year, even after an expensive redesign and rebranding as the "best-seller" in the broadsheet market.

The new-look Telegraph has been attacked by some critics for its failure to throw off the fustiness of its past, retaining the austere, Teutonic Gothic font on the masthead that will repel young readers. Moore, unsurprisingly, disagrees, and ascribes the carping to industry jealousy. "The Fleet Street reaction was quite critical: rivals talking about rivals. The trade-press reaction was very, very favourable," he says. "It's very hard to say, when you look at The Daily Telegraph now, that it's covered with cobwebs."

Moore points to humorous contributors such as Craig Brown, Armando Iannucci and the cartoonist Matt as evidence that the paper is "fun as well as trustworthy" – unlike the Daily Mail, whose recent attempts to inject more laughter into its pages are "like watching a hippopotamus doing ballet", says Moore. He clearly feels that the new-look Telegraph, with "greater immediacy in our front page", reflects the self-confidence that should come from its position in the marketplace. "The 'bestseller' line makes absolute sense. We are the market-leaders and have the attributes of a bestseller – that it's desirable, that it's accessible, that it's the top of its tree," Moore says.

At which point, he draws a distinction between The Daily Telegraph and its Sunday sister, by drawing a comparison between his title and The Sunday Times. The new "bestseller" slogan, he believes, recalls the snappy Wapping claim: "The Sunday Times is the Sunday papers." Without reference to The Sunday Telegraph's editor, Dominic Lawson, Moore says: "We are the market-leaders. As The Sunday Times is on a Sunday."

From his office on the 12th floor of the Canary Wharf tower, Moore clearly keeps half an eye trained on Wapping. The recent scaling-down of the price war between the two newspapers has seen The Times's circulation tumble from 703,000 last June to 655,000 last month. It would seem that Moore feels confident enough to abandon the million-copy sale for the foreseeable future because the pressure from The Times has diminished. "I have been editor for seven and a half years, and for the past five or even six, it has been quite clear that The Times could not get anywhere near us," he says. "In the early days of my editorship, I still wasn't quite confident about the long-term effects of a price war, but it has been clear to me that it doesn't really shift things."

Despite the boasts, the Thunderer is clearly always close to Moore's thoughts. Readers of The Times, he says, are an odd mix of "old Britain, the establishment that doesn't really exist any more, bishops and things," and new arrivals, "all those people who came in when it cost 10p on Mondays". As a result, the paper is "bland as an airline meal, because they don't know who they are serving", unlike the distinct personalities of The Guardian and, naturally, The Daily Telegraph. Moore even has a copy of a Times front page pinned up on his office wall. It is the edition of 31 March 2003, which led on the headline: "Generals dig in for long war. Assault on Baghdad put off for weeks". The Telegraph editor cites it as evidence of a "lack of perspective in some of the war reporting". His staff responded to the Iraqi campaign "like an army jumping to their stations". Moore says: "Fundamentally, we got it right. Our overall arguments were right, and our sense of how this war is likely to go was right."

By contrast, the newspapers that opposed the conflict "exaggerated" the dangers of the military campaign and have "not given enough thought to the really difficult bit" of "how to create a successful society in Iraq." His ABC circulation figures appear to show that readers feel differently: the broadsheet titles showing a month-on-month rise are The Guardian and The Independent. When that is pointed out, Moore says that his impression is that, because of the availability of 24-hour news television, "all the newspapers are somewhat disappointed about sales in the war."

So, perhaps the Telegraph did not have such a great war after all. Not that its owner, Conrad Black, thinks so. In a letter taped to the office wall, the Canadian opines: "We have obviously surpassed our competition and even bear favourable comparison with The New York Times, which, of course, has practically unlimited resources."