Sad news: Independent stops printing

Such sad news yesterday that the Independent and its Sunday version are to stop being printed, albeit a digital version will continue.

I'm personally sad although maybe it's the action of people like me that have caused this closure. I took the Independent every day from its first edition in 1986 until a few years ago when the boring rants of one of its newer feature writers, Owen Jones, drove me first to distraction and then elsewhere. Can there be a more predictable and bigoted writer than him, I wonder.*

I felt an affinity with the newly launched paper from the outset and a few years after its launch wondered if the large number of stories about eastern Europe, an area I had been interested in ever since my schooldays, may have something to do with the Independent editor's education! I checked out Sir Andreas Whittam Smith, founder and then its first editor, in 'Who's Who' – this was in the days before the Internet – and found just what I expected: educated at Birkenhead School, read History at University i.e. taught by Arthur Green who taught me History at A Level at Birkenhead School.

Mind you, that fabulous teacher's influence continued. He also taught the current Director General of the BBC, Peter Hall, or, as we should describe him, Lord Hall of Birkenhead.

Quite an achievement when one history teacher can have so much influence on those three great bastions of the media world: the Independent, the BBC and AudlemOnline!

For many years after its founding, the Independent really did seem to be independent, seemingly free of the influence of over-dominant media moguls such as Murdoch, Northcliffe and more recently the Barclays. It also had an eye for a good news story and, in 2008, when AudlemOnline held its spoof election about the village wanting to join Wales, it was the Independent, alone amongst the nationals, that ran a full page story with fabulous colour photos, about the village and its on-line vote. Even the quotes were accurate, a rare occurrence in the national media.

Hopefully it won't be internet sites that get all the blame for this particular newspaper's closure, although they could well be the primary cause. Regular readers will recall that in 2011, after a number of local newspapers closed across the country, AudlemOnline was contacted by the BBC and used as an example of the new media threatening the future of the local press on BBC Radio 2's Jeremy Vine show.

The live interview started off a little aggressively and it was only when I said I was really sad to see a local newspaper fold as I had started my career at the Liverpool Echo did the mood change – Jeremy Vine had also started in local newspapers at the Coventry Evening Telegraph. He then started to enthuse about this website, its design and the amount of news we carried, all for free.

The Independent was the last national newspaper to be launched. It was a hugely brave enterprise taking on the Fleet Street establishment but it seems that the massive change in reading habits, with the likes of BBC Online supplying free and easily accessible news, is taking its toll on all national newspapers.

When a national like the Independent is only selling 50,000 copies, down from 430,000 at its peak, it's clearly doomed. I do feel a little guilty, however, and irritated with myself, for letting someone like Owen Jones get on my nerves so much that I, like so many others, stopped buying what was once a splendid newspaper.

*The answer is Yes. In my humble opinion, Polly Toynbee in the Guardian is even more boring and irritating, and judging by its recent results, the Guardian may not be far behind the Independent.

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