London Paper Warfare

By london_euan Last edited 232 months ago
London Paper Warfare

paperseller.jpgLondon looks set to receive a new evening paper soon, and a free one at that.

Porn magnate and owner of Express Newspapers Richard Desmond recently stepped up his long gestating plans to launch a free paper to rival both the Metro and the Evening Standard, by trademarking the name London-i and its masthead logo.

It has a lower case "i" in it, so we automatically know that this will be no ordinary paper but more like what papers in the future will be like.

Desmond, publisher of quality top shelf jazz mags like Asian Babes and Readers' Wives, has been embroiled in a long running battle with the Metro claiming that its distribution model is uncompetitive.

Bear in mind though that this is the same stalwart of good business practices who ordered a female executive who arrived late to a board meeting to stand in a cupboard. She refused and then quit by the way.

Meanwhile, Associated Newspapers are busy planning a slimmed down free "lite "version of the Evening Standard, which does have Londonist perplexed as to what exactly will be slimmed out.

If you get rid of the "this woman is too thin/fat (delete where applicable)" articles and the crass editorialising on how "people don't know how to bring up children anymore", what are you actually left with? TV and sport, with a page on how Labour are hanging our brave boys overseas out to dry?

It's a niche market, we'll give it that.

Last Updated 10 November 2004