London, City of
LONDON
One of the U.K.'s leading newspapers The Independent has published its final print edition on Saturday. The paper will be available in a digital-only format.
In a letter published in the final edition, the Russian owner of the paper, Evgeny Lebedev, thanked to the readers of the paper who have contributed to its success since it was launched in 1986.
"Journalism has changed beyond recognition during the lifetime of this newspaper. Therefore the newspaper must change too, adapting to technologies and habits that the paper’s brave founders could not have foreseen", he said.
In 2010, Evgeny Lebedev bought The Independent, which he said was "one of the greatest titles in the history of media". However, he said "it was losing £25m [around $35 million] per year."
The paper also quoted British PM David Cameron in a farewell section. Cameron said that it was a bad day for British journalism.
The paper’s publisher, ESI Media, announced on Feb. 12 that The Independent would move online and that a new app would be available for subscribers.
According to The Independent, there are around 150 full-time editorial staff working for the paper. Redundancies are expected, but also new roles are set to be created for the staff preparing the digital content.
The print paper had a peak circulation of 400,000, but this year readership fell to as low as 56,000.
The website has increased its audience significantly and now reaches about 70 million global users.
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