Newspaper Wars - Round 2

By Rob Last edited 211 months ago
Newspaper Wars - Round 2

More details have emerged today about Associated Newspapers' contender to thelondonpaper. It's described as a "new free London paper”, and the biggest disappointment is that they haven't chosen to call it thenewfreelondonpaper.

In fact it's going to go under the monumentally boring name of London Lite, a ridiculous suffix that AN seem to have stolen from the diet drinks industry and got stuck on.

For a start, it's spelled L I G H T. As dictionary.com says:

Misspelling of "light", when used to mean "lightweight". A suffix denoting a scaled-down or crippled product, often designed to be distributed without charge.

Wow, actually that pretty much describes everything Associated Newspapers have ever published.

So, anyway, London Crippled Lite "will be available throughout Central London every weekday afternoon from midday, with a circulation of 350,000 to 400,000," and will replace the current free afternoon rag Standard Lite. How the two will differ in anything but name has yet to be revealed.

As for the Evening Standard (soon to renamed Standard To The Max, if rumours are to be believed) , that will, according to editor Veronica Wadley, continue to build on the "great reputation for news and quality journalism."

Great news and quality journalism in the Standard? Now, that is news.

Image taken from the Flickr stream of jem under the Creative Commons licence..

Last Updated 16 August 2006