Today is the first day that we follow our daily production routine, which includes two news conferences a day, story and multimedia production, the taking of pictures, allocation of copy and the production of pages. Basically, everything but printing the paper. Once we enter this daily cycle, our focus will shift permanently from thinking to acting. The challenge is a stark one: We must beat the the months of expectation about what The Times will be. We will have just over two weeks to iron out all the last wrinkles. We have been joined for this phase by the phenomenal Peter Atkinson who consults for the Daily Mirror*. He will be with us right through the launch and it is very reassuring to have the presence of one of Fleet Street’s greatest on our floor. Today we will meet not as the band of bright-eyed idealists that started out on this journey months ago, but as a group of mission-focused journalists doing what we do best – writing stories, taking pictures and making movies.

As Marcello Rios of Zero Hora put it: “The first duty of a story is to be read”. There you have it.

*No, that does not mean that The Times is going to be a red-top like the Mirror or the Sun.