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The London Paper to close

I will miss seeing the almost-bust-ups, as londonpaper and london lite distributors jostle for position at a busy bus stop.
 
I feel sorry for the vendors and LP staff that will lose their jobs and having one less newspaper in the world (whatever its faults) is rarely a good thing. Shame.
 
andy2002 said:
I feel sorry for the vendors and LP staff that will lose their jobs and having one less newspaper in the world (whatever its faults) is rarely a good thing. Shame.
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Bizarre. Newspapers aren't intrinsically good. There are good papers and bad papers and by all accounts this was a bad paper.
 
untethered said:
Bizarre. Newspapers aren't intrinsically good. There are good papers and bad papers and by all accounts this was a bad paper.
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I'm no fan of Mudoch, but I don't think it was a bad paper - too light on news for me but pretty good on the arts, sport, celebs and other stuff. Certainly no worse than other tabloid papers and free. In the current climate when the newspaper industry is creaking under the weight of collapsing sales and lack of ad revenue, the fact a paper is having to close is nothing to be celebrated.
 
andy2002 said:
I'm no fan of Mudoch, but I don't think it was a bad paper - too light on news for me but pretty good on the arts, sport, celebs and other stuff. Certainly no worse than other tabloid papers and free. In the current climate when the newspaper industry is creaking under the weight of collapsing sales and lack of ad revenue, the fact a paper is having to close is nothing to be celebrated.
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Why should anyone other than those employed by it give two hoots about the newspaper industry?
 
untethered said:
How many important stories did thelondonpaper break?
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None, probably, but that isn't the point. If a newspaper with the financial clout of Murdoch behind it can't survive more than three years, what does that say about the health of newspapers in general? It's another bad omen for an industry that's already pretty much fucked. The Observer and The Indie are close to closure and they've certainly been known to break the odd decent story in their time. Also, the failure of the LP means future new newspaper launches become less likely.
 
andy2002 said:
None, probably, but that isn't the point. If a newspaper with the financial clout of Murdoch behind it can't survive more than three years, what does that say about the health of newspapers in general? It's another bad omen for an industry that's already pretty much fucked. The Observer and The Indie are close to closure and they've certainly been known to break the odd decent story in their time. Also, the failure of the LP means future new newspaper launches become less likely.
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IMO you have a good point about the future of newspapers. It's a shrinking market, with more people getting news online and sales therefore declining. It's not only national titles either: the old regional press has largely gone already and local titles are under severe threat as well. That is concerning, since it's likely to mean even further concentration of the market in the hands of a few (excessively IMO) powerful corporations.

However, I don't think TheLondonPaper's demise is all that much of a cause for concern in itself. The evening commuter market in London just isn't big enough for both two papers, no matter how well funded they both are. It was only a matter of time IMO before one of them pulled the plug.
 
andy2002 said:
None, probably, but that isn't the point.
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The point seems to be that the newspaper industry has almost completely failed to keep ahead of the social and technological changes for at least the past ten years, if not longer. Instead it has dined out on largely past glories won when the world was a very different place.

By the time they all die there will be very, very little left to mourn.
 
skyscraper101 said:
More entertaining is keeping a free paper at home for ages and then putting it on the seat facing you on your daily commute a few weeks later and seeing how long it takes the opposite person to realise they're reading news from weeks ago.
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That's you? Why I oughtta....
 
Roadkill said:
However, I don't think TheLondonPaper's demise is all that much of a cause for concern in itself. The evening commuter market in London just isn't big enough for both two papers, no matter how well funded they both are. It was only a matter of time IMO before one of them pulled the plug.
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I hope your take on this is closer to the truth than my own rather pessimistic spin. It's just with the London Paper news, plus constant rumours about the Indie and Observer, it's difficult to avoid the feeling that some kind of critical mass is building...
 
untethered said:
The point seems to be that the newspaper industry has almost completely failed to keep ahead of the social and technological changes for at least the past ten years, if not longer. Instead it has dined out on largely past glories won when the world was a very different place.

By the time they all die there will be very, very little left to mourn.
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Newspapers woke up to the possibilities of the internet too slowly (as did the music industry) but I don't think they could have foreseen a situation where consumers expected to get their content free for ever and a day. I'm not sure anyone saw that coming...
 
They're all rubbish, too much celebrity tat and no news.
But is the London Lite actually making any real money either? Anyone know?? Given the losses of the London Paper.
 
It was rubbish, hopefully the Lite will not be far behind and the forests can recover. The London Paper always annoyed me more than the Lite because it banged on about Twitter about 54 times every day, shoehorning a mention into every other fucking story. :mad:
 
andy2002 said:
I hope your take on this is closer to the truth than my own rather pessimistic spin. It's just with the London Paper news, plus constant rumours about the Indie and Observer, it's difficult to avoid the feeling that some kind of critical mass is building...
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I certainly think we'll lose at least one of the major national titles in the next few years, simply because they're competing for places in a shrinking market.

I really hope that's not the Observer or the Indie because they're the ones independent of Murdoch and DMGT (leaving aside the abject Express). However, that independence means they've not the financial backing of the others so it may well be either.
 
On a positive note it will save me my evening role of picking up discarded free papers on my train home and sticking them in the recycling area at the station.(Dedicated to cleaning trains me !) - you hardly ever find "paid" papers discarded on trains ! :mad:

(must be about 5/6 tons of litter a day from this rubbish)
 
davesgcr said:
On a positive note it will save me my evening role of picking up discarded free papers on my train home and sticking them in the recycling area at the station.(Dedicated to cleaning trains me !) - you hardly ever find "paid" papers discarded on trains ! :mad:
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Now, why does this not come as a surprise... :D I imagine bus and tube cleaners feel much the same!
 
andy2002 said:
Newspapers woke up to the possibilities of the internet too slowly (as did the music industry) but I don't think they could have foreseen a situation where consumers expected to get their content free for ever and a day. I'm not sure anyone saw that coming...
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Well you obviously haven't been following very closely. Most analysts in the tech industry have been saying it since day one.
 
I only just heard about this and am disappointed. It was a long way from being the pinnacle of journalism but it was much, much better than the Standard, and played a big part in that horrible newspaper's rapid decline.

There's an interesting piece on Mediaguardian about how it was set up here:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2009/aug/24/thelondonpaper-rupert-murdoch-news-international

The London Paper was a carefully market-researched product aimed at 18- to 35-year-olds. It aimed to be more inclusive than the Evening Standard, appealing to young professionals travelling home to north, south and east London rather than just well-heeled west London. It hired girl- and boy-about-town columnists and, more radically, gay equivalents; it reached out to Muslim readers, and made an effort to put black faces on the cover in stories not related to crime.
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Also it was set up to be politically impartial at a time when the ES had become a rabid attack dog for the Tories/Bojo.

Of course, The Sun was also politically impartial when it was taken over by Murdoch back in the 60s but swung heavily to the right one it had gained popularity.
 
Journalists on the title were "shaken, shocked and very disappointed" when Clive Milner, chief operating officer of Murdoch's UK newspaper empire News International (NI), told them of the decision.
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They had "Journalists"...? How hard is it to copy + paste from the BBC News Web Site...? :eek: :confused: :rolleyes:
 
Might I just echo previous posts and say I much preferred it to the London Lite, though it seemed to be trying to match it for vacuousness recently anyway.

I shall have to actually read the books I always carry in my bag for reading now.
 
Now how do I keep tabs on what Amy Winehouse or Peaches Geldolf did the night before?

I could by Heat but that is only weekly and TheLondonPaper was a daily diary what clubs those and other sub z celebs fell out off or who they have just slagged off. :(
 
ovaltina said:
Also it was set up to be politically impartial at a time when the ES had become a rabid attack dog for the Tories/Bojo.

Of course, The Sun was also politically impartial when it was taken over by Murdoch back in the 60s but swung heavily to the right one it had gained popularity.
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it was about as politically impartial as margarat thatcher humping david cameron whilst singing no surrender to the IRA and wearing an i hate scargill t-shirt

it was also a cancer on london and lets only hope the standard and metro are not far behind
 
ovaltina said:
Really? Why? Any examples?
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try picking up any copy, and if you can actually find any political news then look at the way it treats cameron/osborne/boris compared to anyone else

or have a scan of the average letters page

it was a murdoch owned tory fan sheet, basically the sun without the wit and aimed at fuckwits who live in the home counties and work in the media
 
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