The Independent

The Independent is a British compact newspaper published by Tony O'Reilly's Independent News & Media. It is nicknamed the Indie, with the Sunday edition, The Independent on Sunday, being the Sindie. Launched in 1986, it is one of the youngest UK national daily newspapers, with a circulation of 240,116 in August 2007 according to the UK Audited Bureau of Circulations; a 5.37% drop from November 2006. The Sunday edition has bucked its trend of faring worse than its daily sister; up 1.63% in the last nine months to August 2007 at 216,371. This first rise for a considerable time would seem to reflect a buoying effect of the June 2007 relaunch. The daily edition was named National Newspaper of the Year at the 2004 British Press Awards. The Independent is politically left-leaning.
The Independent is the youngest of the current British "compact" newspapers, first published on 7 October 1986 as a broadsheet. It was produced by Newspaper Publishing Ltd. and created by Andreas Whittam Smith, Stephen Glover and Matthew Symonds. All three were former journalists at The Daily Telegraph who had left the paper towards the end of Lord Hartwell's ownership. Marcus Sieff was the first chairman of Newspaper Publishing and Whittam Smith took control of the paper.The paper was created at a time of considerable tension in British journalism. Rupert Murdoch was challenging long accepted practices and was fighting with the print unions. In this unsettled atmosphere the newly created paper was able to attract very good staff from the Murdoch broadsheets, who chose to jump ship rather than move to Wapping. The Independent also had a rather better relationship with its printers,[citation needed] mainly because it had not been around long enough for the relations to sour.

Launched with the advertising slogan "It is. Are you?", and challenging The Guardian for its politically centre-left readers, and The Times as a 'newspaper of record', it reached a circulation of over 400,000 in 1989. Competing for readers in a moribund market, the arrival of The Independent was one of the factors that sparked both a general freshening of newspaper design as well as a costly 'price war'. The market was very tight, and when The Independent launched an independent Sunday edition in 1990, sales were less than anticipated. Some aspects of production were consequently merged with the main paper, although Sunday publication did continue with a largely distinct editorial staff.

In the 1990s, The Independent started an advertising campaign, accusing its rivals, The Times and The Daily Telegraph of reflecting the views of their respective proprietors, Rupert Murdoch and Conrad Black. It featured spoofs of their mastheads with the words 'THE RUPERT MURDOCH', 'The Conrad Black', and below, 'THE INDEPENDENT'.

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