The demise of UK daily The Independent is a reminder of the importance of - and risks associated with - giving readers a choice, writes Peter Coleman.
I've always liked i, with its crisp format and design, and recognition that there are those among us with serious interests and yet limited time and attention span.
From its peak of more than 400,000 in the mid-1990s, sales of the Independent have fallen to the mid-five figures: to be brutal, the loss 90 per cent of its print audience. Which to many, is hardly surprising: Britons are spoiled for choice, even now, with
Daily Telegraph, The Times and the Guardian at the serious end of the market - where advertising revenue counts more than cover sales - and The Sun, Daily Mail, Daily Mirror, The Star and Daily Express the 'pops' where the reverse applies. And i, which has come from nowhere to build a very creditable 274,000.
The Independent has been down at 56,000, about a third of the circulation of its nearest (and most comparable) rival, The Guardian.
With The Independent, i has been part of Evgeny Lebedev's ESI Media stable - along with the London Evening Standard - but was sold last week for £24 million to Johnston Press, the canny Scots publisher which now owns many of the UK's provincial dailies (including the Portsmouth News, on which I cut my journalistic teeth).
With a digital-only edition continuing after the print edition folds at the end of March, Johnston is expected to buy some content for i from ESI.
Total of the 12 UK dailies' circulations - including the FT and the (Scottish) Daily Record - is about 6.8 million newspapers, and predictably, it's the popular papers which appear to be losing sales fastest, with only The Times and The Star gaining sales last year.
On Sundays, only the Star avoided blood, and Rupert Murdoch's decision to quietly bid for the space vacated by the News of the World is vindicated by the top-listing 1.48 million sales of the Sunday Sun. As is the case nearer home (and it's not an original thought, just one expressed well) nobody ever lost money underestimating public taste.
Compare that with Australia's total midweek sale of less than two million daily newspapers - and very limited choice of voice - and you'll understand why.
That said, the broad array of choice and voice seems an anachronism in today's newsmedia world. 'National' daily and weekend papers are sustained by a hefty component of what is fundamentally London local recruitment and property advertising, being at one national and local dailies.
With its transfer to Johnston Press, i may change that and become a more localised London daily in a stable of city-focussed daily titles from, around the country.