Can the Independent prosper as a digital news provider? Can the i newspaper flourish under new ownership without its strong Indy links? Both questions haunt everyone involved in the transition that follows the decision by Evgeny Lebedev’s company, ESI Media, to sell off the i to Johnston Press (JP) and to close the Independent’s print versions in favour of an online-only entity.
In each case, there will be big adjustments. Some of the staff’s worst fears about losing their jobs will be allayed by JP’s plan to recruit more than 30 of the current Independent editorial team.
They will join the 17 dedicated i staff who are moving over because they are covered by the legal protection enjoyed by employees of a business that is acquired by another business.
So JP’s chief executive Ashley Highfield foresees the emergence of a 50-strong journalistic workforce for i, which will be headed by editor, Oly Duff, and based in the paper’s current Kensington offices.
The i will look the same and Duff will be able to choose material from several sources because JP has secured content deals with the Independent, London Evening Standard and a US publisher plus, of course, the Press Association. And there is likely to be input from the company’s other major daily titles, the Scotsman, Yorkshire Post and Belfast Newsletter.
But the decision of what is published in the i and its new digital offshoot, inews.co.uk, will be Duff’s. Although nominally answerable to JP’s editor-in-chief Jeremy Clifford, he will be editorially independent (pun intended).
One immediate benefit for i will be an enlargement of its circulation area. Currently selling about 270,000 copies a day, there are places where it is not available, such as Northern Ireland and parts of Wales.
With its widespread network of weekly titles, Highfield also believes the company will be able to leverage the links it has with distributors to maximise sales. And, for the foreseeable future, the 40p cover price will remain.
In the Independent’s final week of publication, from 21 March, full-page adverts will announce the i’s transition to a new owner and will seek to persuade Indy readers to transfer their affections to it.
All of this sounds positive enough, but i’s serious content has come from the Independent’s heavyweight contributors, especially those who work abroad, such as Robert Fisk, Patrick Cockburn, Rupert Cornwell and John Lichfield. Then there are the high-profile domestic columnists like Matthew Norman, Yasmin Alibhai-Brown and Virginia Ironside.
Will i still be able to count on such contributors providing the intellectual ballast to balance the lighter content? That all depends on whether they are happy to see their work published in future on the Independent website.
Steve Auckland, ESI Media’s chief executive, is known to be eager to retain the big names. He was quoted last week as saying: “We want high quality, strong journalists on that site.”
Given the desire to ensure that the website is seen as a credible global brand, writers like Fisk and Cockburn are key to the enterprise. Their articles on the Middle East are among the paper’s most read online items.
However, Lebedev, Auckland and whoever ends up in overall charge of the new website after current Indy editor Amol Rajan becomes editor-at-large will need to agree on its target audience in order to ensure that quantity doesn’t overwhelm quality. Some Indy staff have been disappointed by the disconnect between the values of the website as against those of the paper. They think there is too much light-weight content, arguing that it is little more than “a click-bait operation.”
An impartial eye would suggest that that is an unfair assessment. The Independent brand of serious journalism still shines through in the main. Much more pertinent is the clunky nature of the site, which is poorly signposted and badly designed. If it is to win global approval and improve its current claim to 58 million monthly unique users it will need a comprehensive overhaul.
Auckland knows that and once the company receives its Johnston Press largesse there will be money to invest in a better website and to honour the commitment to quality journalism.
To underline that pledge, there are plans to open new editorial bureaux in Europe, the Middle East and Asia. An expansion in the US is also on the cards.
But the overarching question is whether the digital-only Independent, once it has burned its way through the initial funding, can attract the necessary revenue to fund its journalism.
Will advertisers consider the volume of readers, the quantity, rather than their status, the quality? The newspaper called the Independent knew just where it stood on that issue. From its inception it announced itself as a serious paper with a high-minded agenda. Can the Indy website do that too?