A red-letter day

It's not every day that sees the launch of a new national newspaper but this week saw the first appearance of 'i', the new daily from the same stable as The Independent.  As a died-in-the-wool Guardian reader, I've never thought much of The Independent: try as it has done, it has never really carved out its niche, seemingly falling between different stools at differing times.  However, I liked i and think it has a chance to succeed, but at what cost to its parent is an open question.

On day one it led with 'The housing crisis of Coalition Britain', but it's p5 before there's space for its lead story.  P2-3 are 'The News Matrix', which tries to summarise major stories in around 40 words...it's a bit like 'The Week' inasmuch as it tries to give busy (or lazy) people the news in easily digested chunks - it calls its readers the 'time-poor'.  The big story that Iran has been slipping bags (literally) of cash to Afghanistan merited 35 words and it gave a commuter just enough information so that he or she wouldn't feel exposed should the water-cooler conversation take that turn.  It also includes snappy bullet points designed to start conversation in the office or at home: do you know the least clever city in the US (straight from The Daily Beast), and its celebrity chef hate chart, showing which TV cook dislikes which of his or her rivals. 

Inside pages have a peculiar mix of serious and absurd: are Bert and Ernie from Sesame Street a gay couple, sits alongside a piece about Nazi Germany's foreign ministry and its support for genocide.  We have 'The Opinion Matrix', which again could come straight out of the pages of The Week...not an original word of text but rather all lifted from papers around the world.

i readers will be computer literate: we have the blogosphere section, and, of course, @i which is a collection of Texts, Tweets and emails.  Television is a big thing for the paper, and again the aim is to guide the time-poor's viewing: if you like American Crime you'll like these programmes, if Reality TV is your bag try this lot, and so on.  While you're watching your prescribed schedule of programmes, eat your cost-conscious 15-minute Singapore Fried Noodles (again the recipe is lifted from a recently-published book).

And so it goes on, business is covered in - you've guessed it - The Business Matrix, and weather is big - a whole page covering the major cities where, presumably, i readers are thought to live.

Sport is big too, and its coverage is good: snappy, of course, but well written, with the better writers from The Independent all getting an outing.

I said I liked i, and I do, and I especially liked the 20p price tag, although whether it can be maintained at that level has to be open to question.  The big question for me is 'Whither The Independent now?'  It already has the lowest circulation of any of the serious papers, and you have to wonder whether its offshoot might not just be the final nail in its coffin.  The paper is designed to be 'The Independent for commuters' and I'm sure that it will be successful, but for its content it relies upon its parent's writers, and if they weren't affordable, then i couldn't exist. How many Indie readers will desert the parent in favour of the precocious child - having its circulation numbers further damaged is the last thing the Independent needs!  Can i win readers away from the Indie's rivals?  Actually, I think it can - if I was faced with an hour or more on the train, morning and night, I think I might just fork out my 20p to read it on the journey to work, and then probably buy the Evening Standard on the way home.

It will be facinating to follow the progress if i in the coming months - I wonder whether there's a brighter layer of Daily Mail readers who might just be attracted to something slightly more cerebral than their current reading?