The legacy of the London Paper | Simon Fletcher (original) (raw)

So the London Paper is to close, ending Rupert Murdoch's intervention in the London evening newspaper market, which, until the paper's first edition hit the streets, was completely dominated by the Daily Mail group.

Broadsheet readers and news junkies will not mourn the passing of the one-edition-a-day London freesheet distributed at tube stations and on the streets. Its mix of news and lighter material always leaned towards the latter. But it was only able to launch in the first place because its rival, the Evening Standard, had left a gap in the market – in seeking to break that monopoly, it was a positive development, and its creation has changed newspaper coverage in the capital.

The London Paper's debut was the first serious attempt to break the Evening Standard's monopoly in decades. Associated Newspapers had enjoyed unassailed control of the London-wide daily print market, frequently enabling it to drive the news agenda. More than this was its commercial power. Because it had no competition, it had unparalleled leverage over cover price and advertising rates. If you wanted London-wide print advertising as part of your media campaign, you had nowhere else to go. The advertising market dominance was solidified with the Standard's sister paper, Metro, which enjoys a lengthy distribution contract.

Murdoch's London Paper sought to break this stranglehold. For no other reason than that a private monopoly is nearly always bad for the customer – in this case, readers and advertisers alike – the attempt to break Associated's control was a good thing for London.

A market opening for the London Paper was created by the Standard's abuse of its monopoly position to push a relentlessly negative, insular, sub-Daily Mail view of London and Londoners. It drove a partisan political agenda, out of step with those many Londoners who do not buy into a strident rightwing view of the world. London as it really was – including its great achievements and attractions – became barely recognisable under the editorship of Veronica Wadley. Murdoch's News International saw a gap in the market that was less at odds with the experience of many of London readers.

The London Paper tapped into the large numbers of potential readers who – though not rich – nonetheless had a disposable income to spend and enjoyed London's opportunities for doing so. All of this was a massive jolt to the grim prevailing orthodoxy of the Daily Mail group.

The Standard's owners fought the London Paper's threat to its monopoly with the publication of a free rival, the Lite, days before the Murdoch paper appeared. The fact that it was prepared to defend its own paper by unleashing a free spoiler shows how much its market control was worth to Associated.

The outcome of the Standard's old editorial approach was brutally clear: with its monopoly challenged by News International, it was sold to a new proprietor, Alexander Lebedev, for just £1. Lebedev's new editor, Geordie Greig, launched the paper's new look by apologising for its old ways.

If the new-look Standard is able to harness the positive elements the London Paper brought – clearly indicated in the new editor's mission statement – and it combines these with the retention of strong news coverage over its several daily editions, then it may survive and thrive as a quality paid-for paper. Newspaper people and journalists, in particular, will no doubt feel that relying on advertising revenue does not work if you want high-cost reporting rather than "churnalism".

Even among the freesheet's critics, there has to be recognition that competition from the Murdoch paper has forced the market to pay more attention to the demands and views of readers and their experience of London. Let's hope that the eventual outcome of the current period of change in the London newspaper market is not a return to the bad old days of monopoly.