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[url= https://medium.com/@Consultifi/the-independent-and-independence-d8c0f9f79204#.y1sfudtoe ]A rather heartfelt piece on the Indy by a dear friend of mine. [/url]
I used to love the Indy for a few things. Those in depth pieces, as in Andy's words, "the paper’s historical commitment to good photography made those stories roar.....at greater length than they would have done in other papers; usually with merit, sometimes without."
A shame that the Independent stopped being so independent. A shame that we lost a newspaper that had a slightly different view.
It's this that gets to me, though.
I believe in good reporting of global affairs made readable and exciting for a broad audience, as a public good and as a commercial service. I believe in reporting that is free of prejudice and interference. I believe in the importance of independent media, whether it is holding the powerful to account or writing clever pieces about strange places to entertain the curious, because that matters too. The world is a huge and complex place and no single voice can describe it; we need more voices and stronger ones.
He's right. Will be buying him a pint for this one.
I bought it for years after it was launched. It lost it's way a long time ago. Will read that piece later
As an aside I support Hacked Off, we deserve a far better press than the one we have
Compare that to the 'investigative journalist', who's 'stings' resulted in many well known people ending up in court, but who has now been jailed for conspiracy to pervert the course of justice after fiddling evidence.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mazher_Mahmood
Police are now having to review cases where he provided evidence going back around thirty years!
https://www.theguardian.com/media/2016/oct/05/new-corp-20-lawsuits-fake-sheikh-conviction
News Corp will hopefully get some comeuppance!
I remember it for the fantastic high contrast black and white photos that graced it's front page when it was first launched. No paper has ever matched that for me since.
who has now been jailed for conspiracy
The Guardian [url= https://www.theguardian.com/media/2016/oct/05/fake-sheikh-mazher-mahmood-tulisa-contostavlos-trial ]says[/url]:
Judge Gerald Gordon adjourned sentencing until 21 October and allowed the defendants continued bail.
Great paper back in the day. That sense of balance and readability is missing from every other mainstream paper now as far as I can tell.
Agreed @rwa it really was something diffrent at many different levels.
CFH I suppose the telling point in the piece is that basically newspapers are a hobby financially, withoit a backwrnwilling to subsidise them they don't survive unless they have a certain niche and one which people are prepared to pay for.
well said Flashy, we need a stronger press with less partisan politics, and the loss of the indy is a sad one
I used to read the Indy in the early days
Then I stopped - so did lots of other people
The paper died
Moral of the story - difficult to survive if people don't want to buy/pay for your product or service. Papers are no different to anything else.
very insightful thm.
i enjoyed it as a read. far more approachable, or maybe accessible, than the guardian, or perhaps just more 'readable' and less moralising.
upshot of it's demise is i just don't buy a paper full stop.
I used to get it regularly. Then they ran anti Iraq war headlines for months, then Yasmin alimeya Brown(sp) really got on my tits with her column, so I stopped buying it.
I knew the war was wrong, but I didnt want to read about it every day, when it made no difference as everyone else at the time supported it.
I used to buy the Independent and (rarely) the Guardian. The Indie lost its way a while ago and the Guardian seems to have gone the same way as BBConline news- almost hysterical repetitive headline chasing.
A real shame on the Guardian.
The Observer..isn't too bad at the moment.
Moral of the story - difficult to survive if people don't want to buy/pay for your product or service. Papers are no different to anything else.
Read it off and on, then it became the hotel free paper and somewhere in there the front page became an opinion piece rather than reporting. Thats where I left it
Robert Fisk's articles are worth paying for.
... and it's even worse now.
Practically every main headline is to do with Brexit.
Unfortunately our print media seems to be on a downward slide, has been for sometime, not sure where it will end up?
The lower end of the has very little proper journalistic content, full up with social media comment about so called celebrities!
I like the I newspaper, it's concise and fairly well written and I'm glad it survived when the Indipendent closed.
Used to love the Indy but it was truly awful at the end, even if aome of the longer pieces were still good
Even as a fully signed up lefty remoaner the guardian is silly sometimes
Their live blogs are still good, tho everyone else does it too
Their long reads and other features like history of cities and lost cities are superb tho
FT OK, times, always wary of Murdoch's influence, the rest of our press is a joke
Good piece and a shame that the print version has gone (I used to buy, but have rarely bought a paper in the last 15+ yrs)
I did turn to the Indy website over the summer - mainly in disgust at the BBCs blatant ineptitude over the pre-vote Brexit coverage
There is still the New Statesman
Guardian seems to have gone the same way as BBConline news- almost hysterical repetitive headline chasing.
It'all about clickbait these days, they need page views and thus the ad revenue.
I think traditional print media is dead as we knew it, specialist news websites fee to view with ad revenue or the Aple News style portals is the model.
I used to enjoy reading the Indy when it was first launched.The photography was excellent,I liked Robert Fisk's articles.Unfortunately it seemed to lose something as time passed & I found Yasmin Alibhai Brown irritating.
As mentioned above current trends in journalism seem to focus on 'Clickbait'. 🙄
I wonder where the next 'Independant' will emerge?
+1 for Robert Fisk, and also Patrick Cockburn. They both still write for the online version, but it's pretty thin gruel otherwise.
After buying today's Observer I've given up. It's just full cover to cover on Brexit madness.