For the last few years people in London have had a choice of free papers to rival the Evening Standard – the Metro, London Lite, and thelondonpaper. Yesterday, News International confirmed that thelondonpaper can no longer carry on after the huge losses it has made year-on-year. The paper will still be going for the time being as consultation is taking place between News International, who own thelondonpaper, and the 60 soon-to-be-redundant staff. James Murdoch heads up News International’s European operations and explained why they took the decision to close the door on this free paper adventure:
The strategy at News International over the past 18 months has been to streamline our operations and focus investment on our core titles. The team at thelondonpaper has made great strides in a short space of time with innovative design and a fresh approach but the performance of the business in a difficult free evening newspaper sector has fallen short of expectations.
Basically, that can be read as ‘we were struggling already but now with the recession in full swing, maintaining this free paper is not possible.’Still, it’s a shame that thelondonpaper is coming to an end but I can’t get really sad about it because it is, like the London Lite and the Metro, papers that are unspectacular. All they do is just give you tell you what’s going in the world whilst you’re commuting. There’s no in-depth analysis, no editorial, no special investigations…no real personality.
I think you’ve missed the meaning of ‘newspaper’– simply a paper that gives you news. Nobody wants or needs opinion shoved down their throat – instead it was left to the readers themselves to write the talk column and others to react to it.
And for the record, thelondonpaper did provide in-depth analysis of London-related issues (ex. Mayoral elections, Climate Camp/G20), but you can’t expect a local paper to cover everything! There were also plenty of double-page features of things going on all over London. Something tells me you never really read it.
Firstly, I do read thelondonpaper and also the London Lite quite regularly because I’m in London so much nowadays (if I wasn’t then I probably wouldn’t have made this blog post in the first place). Regarding the point about there being analysis and so forth…I will retreat a bit from my original post and say they do cover in-depth coverage of some events (which is sillier of me to forget because I remember reading it on my various journeys into London throughout May) but I think that, even then, in my opinion it probably wasn’t as in-depth as it could have been. On the counter-argument, given the nature of the paper, maybe it didn’t need really long pieces and that you could sum it up more effectively than the nationals.
I think your definition of a newspaper is a valid one, and perhaps in some ways can still be applied to the local newspapers, but I think that at the same time it is no longer a definition that applies to the major newspapers. I think if you asked someone on the street what would be featured in a newspaper I think they would probably mention other things like opinion pieces, the weekend magazines (I know people who buy weekend papers just for the magazines) and the like because the majority of the people who buy newspapers are people who buy national rather than local. I say that because the whole opinion side of newspapers has gotten really popular and, heck, some of the highest profile ones have even reprinted them in book form and sold a ton of them.
I’m very glad to see the demise of such a horrible waste of paper! I would love to see all these free papers be taken off the streets – its an example of self-indulgence on the part of a very luck group of individuals. Yes they get recycled but surely not using the energy in the first place is better? Are we so numb to life that in the short time we spend on public transport we need to engross ourselves in light reading at the expense of the environment and our principles?