i, the UK's first quality national newspaper to launch in 25 years, will go on sale nationwide on Tuesday 26th October 2010. Created by the Independent, i is designed for busy, time-poor readers who want a concise, quality daily paper for just 20p.
The i combines intelligent brevity with depth and breadth.
i is aimed at readers and lapsed readers of quality newspapers of all ages and aims to attract new readers to the quality press market at a time when competitors are abandoning print and moving their focus to digital.
Available on Mondays to Fridays, i will complement an improved Independent, which will have a distinctive new look and feel, and remain priced at £1.
Alexander Lebedev, Director of Independent Print Ltd said "My commitment is to a strong vibrant free press as well as creating innovative media ventures with first class journalism.” He is also the co-owner of Novaya Gazeta, the pro-democracy newspaper in Moscow, along with President Mikhail Gorbachev.
Evgeny Lebedev, Chairman of Independent Print Ltd, said “I am very proud to launch i, which will be the first quality daily paper to have launched in Britain since The Independent itself in 1986. My father and I believe that a free press is a fundamental tool of a democracy, and we believe that newspapers still have a future, and a very important one. We have shown by our investment in the London Evening Standard that, even in these highly competitive times, it is possible to revive a brand, and we aim to do the same with The Independent by the launch of i and the improvements to the parent paper.’”
i will be edited by the Independent’s Editor-in-Chief Simon Kelner, who said: "With the launch of i we are again doing something radical and new, creating a paper for today that retains the essential qualities of The Independent. Ever since The Independent launched in 1986, the paper has had a reputation for innovation and boldness. We were the first quality paper to go compact.”
Andrew Mullins Managing Director of the Independent Print Ltd said: "Quality newspapers provide a very hard to reach and highly valuable audience for advertisers but recently print audiences have been in decline and those left reading are getting older. Busy, time-poor newspaper readers, and especially commuters, have been telling us for years that they are inundated with too much information from too many sources and just don't have the time to regularly read a quality newspaper. We are creating a new, modern intelligent newspaper for the 21st century that is designed to make people want to read it in the limited time that they have available in their busy day. i is a reader-led newspaper with broad reach and intelligence."
