Independent to run London Standard newspaper
Independent Media is poised to run the digital and commercial operations of the London Standard, little more than a year after the freesheet pared back its print operation to focus on a weekly edition.
Staff were informed in a memo circulated on Tuesday that the Lord Evgeny Lebedev-owned Standard was “in the process of negotiating a contract” over its digital operations with Independent Media, in which Lebedev also holds a stake.
The Standard will maintain its weekly print product “with a core print team”, the memo said, bolstered “by a cost structure that future-proofs the business”. Remaining staff will be able to take up a voluntary redundancy scheme, which will run alongside a formal consultation process for other roles.
The operational overhaul follows a difficult period for one of London’s oldest newspapers. Its freesheet model – published on weekdays – was uprooted by a combination of the pandemic, when commuter traffic dried up, and changes to media consumption habits. It made the decision to reduce its print product to a larger, weekly edition in September 2024.
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The deal is the latest of several moves from the Independent Media Group to expand its portfolio of news brands. In 2024, it seized control of UK operations for digital publishers Buzzfeed and Huffington Post. The group has since managed to make the publications, which were both loss-making when it took control, profitable in less than two years.
The Standard and Independent both have close ties to Lebedev, a Russian-born proprietor who was given a peerage by Boris Johnson in 2020. Alongside his KGB-agent father, Lebedev bought the Standard – known then as the Evening Standard – outright for just £1 in 2009, and helped oversee its transition to a free newspaper handed out in the afternoon largely at transport hubs. Mohamed Abuljadayel – a Saudi financier – and Daily Mail-owner Lord Rothermere also own small stakes in the paper.
Alongside their ownership of the Standard, Lebedev and Abuljadayel own part of Independent Media, though their holdings are diluted with other shareholders including a large share by entrepreneur and Felix Project co-founder Justin Byan Shore.
The memo released to Standard staff, first reported by the Financial Times, said that while “no final decisions had been made”, “management and shareholders are exploring options to strengthen the performance of our digital and print operations”.
Top brass said they hoped the new structure “strengthens our audience and commercial proposition, upholds the quality and integrity of the Standard’s journalism, supports our people [and] positions the organisation for sustainable long-tern growth”