The Indie needs digital expertise and a cash boost

Since its birth in 1986 at the height of Thatcherism and the Big Boom-led renaissance of the UK economy, The Independent's short history has had many twists.

Given its present overtly left-wing PC agenda, it's hard to imagine that it was conceived by three Daily Telegraph journalists and that it was the Telegraph that was most worried when the new paper seemed to hit the zeitgeist of the era, attracting large numbers of upwardly mobile yuppies, of Telegraph-reading parentage, but independent of mind, more interested in making money than politics.

When that zeitgeist evaporated, and the Indie made the error of launching a Sunday edition that starved the daily of funding, its fortunes started to wane. A period under the unsympathetic ownership of Mirror Group didn't help, and the fact that the two papers survive to this day is due to the charitable largesse of Tony O'Reilly and his co-investors.

That largesse - both papers are loss-making (as are most national newspapers) - is now threatened by a dissident shareholder, Denis O'Brien, an embittered foe of O'Reilly, who wants the papers closed.

O'Brien can see no future for the papers, which lag behind rivals in developing digital operations that could bring in much-needed customers and revenue to combat declining circulations. Sales are falling faster than any of the other qualities, despite numerous trendsetting design revamps.

Whether any of this is connected to last week's shock management shake-up is unknown. Roger Alton, the distinguished former Observer editor, was available. Maybe O'Reilly felt the Indie could benefit from a fresh editorial approach. That might explain the unusual tack of elevating Simon Kelner to managing director.

Even more surprising, perhaps, is the replacement of commercial director Simon Barnes with Daryl Fielding, a creative agency executive with no experience of papers, or sales.
They are bold moves, and one hopes they bring success. But the portents are not good. For one thing, Alton has different politics - he's diametrically opposed to Kelner on the Iraq War, for example, and does not suffer any meddling in his affairs. Can Kelner keep his counsel?

What The Independent really needs is an injection of expertise in digital strategy, supported by lots of dosh. And, with some shareholders demanding a balancing of the books, that seems unlikely.

Colin Grimshaw
MediaWeek
15th April