The 20p tabloid claims to be the first quality newspaper launched in the country for almost 25 years, and is certainly a breath of fresh air for the industry. Pages are bright and open, with summary spreads delivering snippets in an intelligent and attractive format.

You can see the appeal for the ‘time poor’ – which must be most of us these days – and it seems there is more to this clever strategy than just the content, drawn from the resources of its bigger sister paper.

For a start, its distribution delivers a key difference between ‘i’ and free dailies such as ‘Metro’ and the revamped ‘London Evening Standard’: You buy it… and casual purchasers will be drawn to a daily choice on whether to buy the slimmed down ‘Independent’ or the real thing. Obviously, they could opt for something else, but ‘i’ delivers a regular relationship with readers – or the opportunity for it – which should build a bond with the editorial team.

20p isn’t going very far towards the costs of production and distrubition these days, but involves newsagents and will presumably keep them happier than they would be with a free.

And should be better than paying people to give your paper away, or having them go without.

Some interesting research for Australia’s The Newspaper Works recently has shown that it’s not just the newly-literate in emerging nations who like the prestige of being seen with a newspaper in their hands: Among demographic groups researched, 14-24s felt “more informed and educated” by printed newspapers than any other medium, and their 25-34-year-old contemporaries found newspaper ads more believable.

See this page for the full research results.

And for the purposes of the health of the industry, any newspaper reading is good. The daily U-Bahn journey to the IfraExpo halls recently was as good a place as any to study the relative demographics of ‘Bild’ readers and those studying the much more conservatively-designed Berliner dailies on offer in Hamburg… but that’s another subject.

The question everyone is now asking is whether an ‘i’ product could succeed in their home market: And of course, the answer is ‘yes’ and ‘no’.

Production of a parallel edition is no more complicated these days – and need not be much more costly – than publishing to any number of hot new digital channels. Mostly it’s about sharp subbing and page design to create a visual feast which continues to excite long after the concept designers have handed it over to day-to-day teams.

And story selection: A Spanish ‘i’ tabloid has been running for some months now, but seems to differ from the UK version in key respects. One is that it’s not a ‘partner’ edition, and another that the focus on story selection is what to leave out, rather than what to include.

In Australia, I would imagine that Fairfax Media might do very well with the design, less well with the story choices, and might struggle with the daring (and strategic organisation) needed to actually launch something vaguely competitive to the News Limited tabloids.

As for News, imagine an upmarket tabloid, paired more with the ‘Australian’ than the ‘Telegraph’ and you might have a formula… but there would be fears that such a product might eat into already slim margins.

If the publishing industry’s entrepreneurs weren’t all so digitally-focussed these days, perhaps an Eric Beecher could do the job, licensing content from the pick of the papers (watch out for the printing bills, though). Or perhaps (wicked but unlikely thought) APN would feel uninhibited enough to put an i-style product into sizzling Brisbane, now that News is working its way into traditional APN markets on the Sunshine Coast!

In the UK, the market still sustains a wide choice of tabloids and serious former broadsheets, and makes competition space for a new player such as ‘i’ possible.

Could it happen here? We’d like to think so, but it would take (a) a new player with imagination and deep pockets; (b) management at Fairfax or APN freed from the constraints of stockmarket whim; or (c) or a hands-on proprietor bold enough to make a move for the future of printed newspapers.

Like the one who’s been in town this week for the News awards, perhaps?

Peter Coleman