In the end it was the internet which killed the Independent newspaper and not Rupert Murdoch. Hit by a price war launched by the News UK owner in the 1990s, the Indy was a casualty of an industrial revolution which has changed the economics of the newspaper business for ever.
After almost 30 years of losing money, it was the cost of publishing a newspaper for so few daily readers – just 40,718 once free or discounted copies are considered– that had simply become unsustainable in an age where so much information is free online.
Before the leak of takeover talks for the i, the owners of the Independent had hoped to present any decision to make the title online only as a positive one. Evgeny Lebedev and his team are understood to have wanted to suggest that the death of print was simply “making the step that everyone else was too scared to make”
In doing so, Lebedev and the management team had looked to the BBC’s decision to close its BBC3 television channel and put its content online only. Simply put, this arguments says that the future is online
The problem for the Independent is that it was relatively late to the internet, only taking it seriously with its website relaunch in 2008, and a succession of owners have never invested enough in web content.
With 2.8m daily unique browsers, according to December’s audited circulation figures, its online figures have never really threatened its old rivals, lagging behind rivals ranging from the Daily Mail, the Guardian, the Daily Telegraph and the Mirror.
It wasn’t meant to be like this. Back in March 1990, sales of the then four-year old Independent had reached an all-time high of 423,000, eclipsing the Murdoch-owned Times.
Without a proprietor in the early years, the Independent was immediately seen as a fresh voice when it launched in 1986. Recognising the power of a brand and of the ad market before many others and its clever ad line, provocatively asked readers, “The Independent: It is, are you?”.
Once the paper took off, Murdoch’s reaction was to cut the cover price of his then broadsheet title and start a price war which hit profits for decades to come. Ultimately, the Murdoch manoeuvre of the 1990s proved the financial benefits of a rich owner with seemingly endless pockets in the increasingly cut-throat newspaper market of the period.
Having become smaller than its rivals, the Independent was forced to innovate. It was the first to switch from broadsheet to a tabloid format in 2003, prompting the Times (again) to follow suit, it later became a “viewspaper” with opinion on the front page.tisement
In 2010, its owners launched the i, a cheaper spin off for a younger audience, priced initially at 20p and which quickly found an audience. The i now has a circulation of 268,431,
Cheaper than the paper it depends on for much of its content, it soon outstripped its older sister with strong demand in universities and other cost-conscious parts of the country.
Yet the success of the i sustained the Independent. Charlie Burgess, sports editor at launch who became managing editor in the 1990s, said: “If it wasn’t for the i, the Independent would not have lasted this long.”
The launch of the i came after the 12 years of full ownership by Ireland’s Tony O’Reilly, who spent tens of millions of pounds on the paper.
Launched in the wake of the Wapping print strike, the Independent newspaper got rid of its “We’re independent, are you?” tag in 2011, a year after its purchase for just £1 by Alexander Lebedev.
The billionaire former KGB boss and his son Evgeny have proved ready to try new things at the title although during their tenure the paper also dropped the taglines “free from party political bias” and “free from proprietorial influence”.
Although it will continue as a digital only brand, the loss of the Independent as a visible presence on the newsstand raises all sorts of questions about media plurality in a market in which rightwing titles dominate.
While a cacophony of voices exists online, the loss of a groundbreaking newspaper which was once considered radical and anti-establishment is likely to be keenly felt at a time of political upheaval and discontent.
QUESTIONS
1. The article says that recent happenings mean that only right wing newspapers are still sold. Why?
2. Do you think that people are disillusioned with jopurnalists ? Again why?
3.Can a newspaper appeal to a younger audience?
4. Is online news better ?
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The most important thing about love is maybe the love of living . Living a life worth living is maybe the only real thing about love because if we love our life it creates happiness . That said a young student once told me that the only love is self love because when someone we really like tells us they love us this student said it just confirms your love of yourself because someone else thinks the same
1.An Addiction
Love can be like drugs because when we think we love it’s a really good feeling and we want more of it . So it could be an addiction .
2.The Heart
It feels like love happens in the heart but scientists say it happens in the brain . Probably true.
Why do we love someone ?
I think there’s lots of reasons and l don’t really know but maybe it’s an unconscious thing . My wife has the same coloring as my Mother and l was really attached to my Mother as a kid so maybe that’s why l was very attracted to my wife . Both looked very Southern Italian .
Maybe we love someone because they make us alive or make us think .
Maybe we love someone because they just make life worth living
3.Shakespeare
The Bard wrote about love a lot and even wrote about his love for dark haired women or a woman . His most famous line about love is from a sonnet where see the line “ Shall l compare you to a Summers day” . When he talked about love he said something like love hits you between the eyes and there is nothing you can do to stop it .
Questions
1. Why do you think we love certain people ?
2.is love stronger than hate ?
3 . Do we love people because they give us money and riches so our life becomes sweet ?
When Ulysses set out from lthaca it was the beginning , maybe , of the travel book . What is that ? Well it’s about one thing . If you can’t travel the next best thing is to read about it .
The story of Ulysses is a great one and l remember l was transfixed by this story as a kid . I liked this story more than anything as a kid and especially liked the end when he settles accounts with the suitors of Penelope .
The thing about human beings and also many animals is that travel is the food of the soul. Why ? Because every day we are in robotic mode , we move through life seeing the same things doing the same things but suddenly we do something that means we see things with new eyes and it’s called travel . Suddenly the world becomes beautiful and interesting .
What kind of travel is there . First of all they say travel was created by British aristocrats .Going on what they called the grand tour taking in Switzerland , France and ltaly in the 1700s but of course travel goes back to the Middle Ages and we only have to look at Chaucer’s pilgrims who gathered at the Tabard inn London to journey to Canterbury and as l said before the epic voyage of Ulysses . There is the classic figure of the tramp who for all life wandered around mostly walking everywhere . That character has more or less vanished but by walking they saw more than most . They seemed to have had a kind of wanderlust because they just kept on their journey from one place to another . Maybe normal life bored them or maybe running away from something
Then as regards ordinary people there is the holiday where we suddenly take in new sights and new feelings about life always an adventure . Lastly there is the journey of the immigrant who leaves home to find a better life . They had little idea of what life awaited them but travelled on into an unknown land many going to America . Some made their fortune there Others died in misery but it was always that these immigrants were going forward to change their lives .
Questions
1. What do you think an immigrant felt leaving his home ?
2.What's the difference between travel and a journey ?
3 . What's The best holiday or travel you ever did ?
Thames Street may have also been the location of Geoffrey Chaucer’s residence. He is believed to have lived at or near 177 Upper Thames Street, though it is a point of contention among many Chaucer experts.
The London of Chaucer's time (the reigns of Edward III. and Richard II.) was a scattered town, spotted as thick with gardens as a common meadow is with daisies. Hovels stood cheek by jowl with stately monasteries, and the fortified mansions in the narrow City lanes were surrounded by citizens' stalls and shops.
Westminster Palace, out in the suburbs among fields and marshes, was joined to the City walls by that long straggling street of bishops' and nobles' palaces, called the Strand.
The Tower and the Savoy were still royal residences. In all the West-end beyond Charing Cross, and in all the north of London beyond Clerkenwell and Holborn, cows and horses grazed, milkmaids sang, and ploughmen whistled.
There was danger in St. John's Wood and Tyburn Fields, and robbers on Hampstead Heath. The heron could be found in Marylebone pastures, and moorhens in the brooks round Paddington.
Priestly processions were to be seen in Cheapside, where the great cumbrous signs, blazoned with all known and many unknown animals, hung above the open stalls, where the staid merchants and saucy 'prentices shouted the praises of their goods.
The countless church-bells rang ceaselessly, to summon the pious to prayers. Among the street crowds the monks and men-at-arms were numerous, and were conspicuous by their robes and by their armour.
But of many of those people who paced in Watling Street, or who rode up Cornhill, we have imperishable pictures, true to the life, and rich coloured as Titian's, by Chaucer, in those "Canterbury Tales" he is supposed to have written about 1385 in advanced life, and in his peaceful retirement at Woodstock.
The pilgrims he paints in his immortal bundle of tales are no ideal creatures, but such real flesh and blood as Shakespeare drew and Hogarth engraved. He drew the people of his age as genius most delights to do; and the fame he gained arose chiefly from the fidelity of the figures with which he filled his wonderful portrait-gallery.
QUESTIONS. Some you have to research
1. What is the Savoy now?
2. Whats his connection with the Bard and Hogarth?
