The chief executive of the Independent has said a push will be made to get big names such Robert Fisk to stick with the digital publication following the closure of the print titles.
Steve Auckland, the chief executive of the parent company of the Independent and the Evening Standard, said that no discussions have yet taken place with any of the Independent’s star writers such as Fisk, Matthew Norman and John Lichfield.
“We want our bigger name writers writing for the Independent website,” said Auckland. “We want high quality, strong journalists on that site. We have global ambitions for the Independent and a London powerhouse with the Standard. We want to really take advantage of that now.”
The closure of the print editions of the Independent and Independent on Sunday had to remain confidential until the sale of stablemate i had been concluded.
The independent.co.uk website has been criticised for running light-weight content, not least by many of its own staff.
“The website doesn’t represent the newspaper at all,” said one staff member. “A lot of staff are concerned about the quality of it – it’s a click-bait operation. All they care about is the number of clicks they get. That is a real worry if it is the future of the Independent.”
Auckland acknowledged the issue and said the website, which will be boosted by at least 25 staff, is to get an editorial overhaul.
“We are going to change it a little bit,” he said. “It is a good website but we will push it harder so there is more quality there, more investigative journalism. It is a good website but we will do more with it. More like the [print] editorial.”
The company will make £25m from the sale of the i title to Johnston Press, owner of the Scotsman and Yorkshire Post, and has pledged to invest in “quality journalism” including opening new editorial bureaux in Europe, the Middle East and Asia, as well as an expansion of the US operation.
The Independent.co.uk website has about 58 million monthly unique users.
Overall about 50% of the 150 full-time staff that work on the Indy and i are expected to be retained following the closure of the print editions next month.
Amol Rajan, the Independent’s editor, will take a role as editor-at-large on the digital operation.
Lichfield, who left the Scotsman to write for the Independent when it was set up – along with Andrew Marr – mourned the closure of the print titles. “It’s a very sad day – it was perhaps inevitable that it would be the first to go because it was the weakest in the herd.”
Lichfield said he believed the i may struggle to survive without its parent publication: “The i is being killed as much as the Independent by this deal. Without the core of proper journalism it could have difficulty in maintaining its success.”
He said much of what management had said on Friday had been “dishonest” and described the sale of the i to Johnston Press by the Lebedevs as “asset-stripping”.
The Lebedevs had not wanted the print titles to continue under a new owner, Lichfield believed, because they would undermine the viability of the Independent website. At least one offer for the titles had been rejected about a year ago, he said. However, Lichfield said, the Lebedevs had put a lot of money into the titles and could not be blamed for making this decision.
Former owner Tony O’Reilly, who sustained losses of tens of millions of pounds, deserved credit for keeping the paper afloat last decade, Lichfield said, and he also singled out former editor Simon Kelner for praise.
