‘i’ could give Alexander Lebedev profitable one million a day portfolio UK circulation

Posted by Dominic Ponsford on 26 October 2010 at 11:20
Tags: Alexander Lebedev, Indepedent, Journalism, Journalists, National Newspapers, The Independent

You only have to look at the currently  calamitous quality national newspaper circulation figures to see how sensitive newspapers are to price fluctuations – particularly at the top end of the market.

Charging £1 a copy for newspapers that contain much less advertising, so are much thinner than they were a few years ago, is not a recipe for circulation success. And the last time we had a quality daily, the 20p Times during the circulation war of the late Nineties, sales soared through the roof.

So the Independent’s condensed stablemate i should have a major impact on the market.

It provided me with more than enough reading to fill my 20-minute commute into central London. I’d guess that it would take 40-minutes to read from cover to cover, so presents exceptional value.

Aimed at the “time-poor” it claims to target  lapsed newspaper readers in general, but it clearly has a much younger slant than its quality competitors. The Guardian woos the young with its separate features section, as does The Times, but as a new launch the i can afford to be unashamedly youthful from front to back.

Thus the splash today is about the young being priced out of the housing market and the treatment of news and features throughout is much more colourful and informal than The Independent proper and the other ‘qualities’.

It’s not beefy enough to provide a real substitute for the £1-a-copy papers at the top end of the market, but far more serious than the red-tops and should appeal to those who are yet to see themselves as middle-England Mail and Express readers.

In short i has found a neat slot in the market.

Young people hoover up free copies of Metro and the Evening Standard, and previously fell upon thelondonpaper and London Lite. There is no question that they like reading newspapers, they just come from a generation which seems reluctant in the extreme to pay for their information (or for music for that matter).

The big question is whether they can be tempted to pay 20p for  ‘I’ and even if they do, whether this can be sustainable financially for the publisher.

Who knows what Indy owner Alexander Lebedev’s wider game-plan is. Or even whether, as a billionare already, his agenda really is making even more money.

Independent managing director Andrew Mullins has indicated that a circulation of 200,000 a day would be sustainable for i.

That would leave,maybe 100,000 ‘top people’ still paying £1 a day for the full-fat Independent and another 700,000 a day picking up a free copy of the Lebedev-owned Evening Standard.

That would give the former KGB man a pretty impressive portfolio circulation of one million a day for his ad-sales people to sell across.

The i has a dedicated editorial team of just ten, with a further ten staff deputed from The Independent to work across it.

With costs that low and a readership across the portfolio comprising well-off Londoners, the hard-to-reach young and independent opinion-former types – it sounds like a compelling and profitable proposition.

And if i persuades the internet generation to finally start paying for some of their information – Lebedev will have done the whole UK journalism industry a great service.

Crozier’s verdict:

I asked former Independent associate editor (design) Michael Crozier what he thought about the new paper.

Here’s what he had to day:

“I like i. 56 pages for 20p, less than 1/2p per page. It’s great value in these straitened times for a new newspaper that revives The Independent’s philosophy of innovation.

“The paper is a far more entertaining and informative read than Metro and leaves most of the the gravitas to its big brother. The aim is to expand the marketplace by picking up lapsed, or new, young readers. If the distribution, marketing and editing is right, it may just do it. Certainly, advertising/editorial ratio was high ­but you would expect that in a launch issue.

“Shared editorial services (in this case a direct feed from The Indy) are an unstoppable aspect of modern journalism. But i ‘does have its own identity. The design is modern and iconic – the curvy boxes and index skylines across the top of pages instantly evoke the layout of the iPhone and iPad. This should resonate with its finger-tapping and thumb-scrolling target audience.

“One cavil though: the front page with a dominant image of  toy town houses had little visual, attention-grabbing impact on the newsstand. Early days!”

The Portuguese newspaper which may have inspired new UK daily ‘i’

Posted by Dominic Ponsford on 19 October 2010 at 06:45
Tags: National Newspapers, The Independent, i

The little we have seen so far of the new daily newspaper being launched by the Independent next week – ‘i’ – suggests it may have drawn inspiration from the Portuguese newspaper of the same name.

From what we can see (in this ad from yesterday’s Evening Standard) the design will be radical, with a vertical masthead going down the left of the front page – rather than across the top.

Portugal’s ‘i’ launched in May 2009 and by the end of the year claimed to be the third biggest selling daily in the country.

It is radically different design wise from a conventional newspaper, looking and reading more like a magazine.

Instead of the usual news, features, comment and sport sections it is divided into Opinion, Radar, Zoom, and More.

(Then) editor Martim Avillez Figueiredo gave an interview which appeared in Press Gazette magazine in January this year.

He said: “Readers felt they needed a newspaper that gave a hierarchy to information that was dispersed in several platforms, and that gave them what many newspapers don’t give, which has rigorous editing (to highlight) that which deserves to be analyzed in depth…

“This is the way people nowadays relate to information, and we think this is the reason why the newspaper (i) has a high circulation, because it meets with the mind of the reader.”

According to the paper’s own research, 25 per cent of its readers generally never read newspapers before.

Looking at all the other UK national newspapers, they haven’t changed that much design wise in a century. They still follow typographical conventions from the age of hot-metal, direct descendants of Gutenberg’s 15th century moveable type printing press.

The Independent’s new ‘i’ could be a chance to follow the example of its Portuguese namesake and create a radically different kind of newspaper.

Independent’s new daily ‘i’ could spell the end for Indy mothership

Posted by Dominic Ponsford on 18 October 2010 at 12:50
Tags: Alexander Lebedev, National Newspapers, The Independent

The mantra of the modern day big media news organisation has to be innovate or die – and nowhere is this more true than at The Independent.

Last year no-one gave the smallest UK quality newspaper any chance of surviving as it struggled to stem losses (both financial and of circulation) under Independent News and Media.

When Alexander Lebedev threw the Independent titles a lifeline by buying them in March this year one thing was certain – continuing as they had done before was not an option.

When Press Gazette interviewed Indy editor in chief Simon Kelner in May it was pretty clear that there was no plan in place at that time – other than to be radical.

Well here is what they have come up with - a 20p a day scaled-down spin-off edition of The Independent called ‘i’.

Effectively a return to the price war of the 1990s, with a radical twist. Back then quality newspapers were making much more advertising than they are now, but it still cost The Times tens of millions in losses to sell for as little as 20p.

How can such a move work now (when the advertising market has plunged) and if it succeeds, will it spell destruction for The Guardian, Times and Telegraph – which are all currently losing sales at a rate of more than 10 per cent a year?

One thing is certain. Newspapers are extraordinarily price sensitive, and a 20p quality national will have an impact. But it will be in a precarious position.

It has to be considerably better than the bright and breezy news round-up offered by free daily Metro to prise 20p out of punters. But it has to be significantly worse than the Independent, to make dedicated readers of that title still cough up £1.

When the Independent went tabloid in 2003, it first dipped its toe into the market by offering a tabloid version inside the M25 in addition to the old broadsheet mothership.

My money is that the launch of this new 20p a day spin-off is the first stage a transition which could see The Independent go, to be replaced by this new leaner, more fleet of foot of foot incarnation.

The Independent says ‘i’ is aimed at readers of all ages. But the name gives the game away, this is aimed at a younger market – hardly any of whom are currently buying a quality daily newspaper.

Whatever the prevailing wisdom about new digital media, young people still love reading newspapers. They devoured Thelondonpaper and London Lite and still read Metro in their hundreds of thousands.

20p is not a big leap to provide a new product  for time-starved commuters who want a deeper read but won’t shell out for The Times, Telegraph or Guardian.

It’s a fantastically bold move and completely unexpected. All eyes now are on Wapping to see if, like 2003, Rupert Murdoch will bring out a spoiler spin-off edition of The Times. It seems unthinkable that even he could afford to drop the price of the Times to 20p in response, but that would remain the nuclear option for him.

Independent relaunches as a more thoughtful paper…but will it really be free from Lebedev’s influence?

Posted by Dominic Ponsford on 20 April 2010 at 11:06
Tags: National Newspapers, The Independent

Independent editor Simon Kelner takes his Viewspaper philosophy of what a national daily newspaper should look like today to the next level with his his latest relaunch of The Independent.

It’s a serious and upmarket relaunch evidently designed to appeal to the Independent’s somewhat rarefied audience these days which makes sense and sticks to the heart of what The Independent is about.

But it can’t hide the fact that at £1 a copy, The Independent does feel pretty thin.

Roy Greenslade doesn’t think much of it, but admits that he does not write from an unbiased viewpoint.

For me it is an improvement on the 2008 relaunch. It feels like a more thoughtful paper, which is trying hard to keep ahead of the news agenda and look askance at it. The Independent cannot hope to outgun its rivals so it must out think them by doing things a little differently.

The beefy Election 2010 section reflected well the drama that has been injected into the campaign by Nick Clegg’s surprise debate victory – and headlines like “Tory decapitation squad targets Jacqui Smith”, certainly grabbed my interest.

“Interrogation by email” between Richard Garner and Tory education spokesman Michael Gove across a double-page spread was another nice touch.

Although the whole package felt decidedly thin, there were enough big reads in there to keep most people going through a half-hour or more train journey.

But the new Viewspaper second section feels a little gimmicky to me, and simply repackages existing content into a new slot.

The front page of it looks like it has been created by designers for designers and I found it to be all but unreadable.

Caretaker editor Simon Kelner’s claim on page two that the Independnet is now the only newspaper which is free from proprietorial influence and political affiliation is a bold one and clearly aimed at winding up the opposition (which judging by Greenslade’s reaction it has done).

And the “FREE FROM PROPRIETORIAL INFLUENCE” claim below the masthead must be based more on hope than reality as Kelner can have little idea yet what sort of proprietor Lebedev will turn out to be. But at hopefully it will at least serve to stiffen the resolve of the new editor, whoever that may be, if Lebedev does turn out to be more hands-on than he is at present indicating.

If Lebedev really does turn out to be as saintly as Kelner is suggesting his claim may hold water.

The News International titles are influenced to varying extents by Rupert Murdoch, ditto Telegraph Group and the Barclays, the FT is arguably influenced to the extent that it is in favour of capitalism and making money (albeit in a non-partisan way), Richard Desmond at Express Newspapers needs no explanation, the Rothermeres claim not to influence their titles – but they do reflect a very distinct world view and The Guardian is constitutionally bound to promote ‘liberal journalism’.

Mind you Kelner probably should have said only “national newspaper” as, unlikely the nationals, the majority of regional newspaper in the UK really can claim to be absolutely free of proprietorial influence.