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London's Evening Standard to become free paper
Published in Saudi Press Agency on 02 - 10 - 2009


The Evening Standard has decided to take on
rivals in London's fiercely competitive newspaper market by
switching to free distribution later this month, according to AP.
The 180-year-old paper's Russian tycoon owner says
dropping the 50 pence ($0.80) price will make it the
world's first quality newspaper to adopt the free model.
The company, which also publishes The Times and The Sun
newspapers, said the paper had performed below expectations
in a competitive evening newspaper sector that includes
free rivals.
The move comes as newspapers around the world struggle to
adapt to the challenge for readers from free news on the
Internet and the plunge in advertising revenue caused by
the global recession.
Just last month Rupert Murdoch's media group News
International shut down its daily freesheet,
thelondonpaper.
The Evening Standard's circulation will more than double
from 250,000 to over 600,000 copies after it begins free
distribution on Oct. 12, the paper said in a statement.
In the statement, company Chairman Alexander Lebedev said
he wanted the paper, which the Russian tycoon and former
KGB spy bought earlier this year, to be the world's «first
leading quality newspaper to go free,» and said he expects
other papers to follow suit.
The paper, whose history can be traced back to 1827 and
whose blue-and-white signboards and brash vendors are
London institutions, has struggled to adapt to the Internet
age. It is believed to lose millions of pounds a year and
faces fierce competition with daily free afternoon
newspapers.
Lebedev was ranked by Forbes magazine last year as the
world's 358th richest man, worth more than $3 billion. But
his fortune has been hit hard by the global economic
downturn. Lebedev said last year that he has seen about
two-thirds of his stock portfolio wiped out by the crisis
and joked that he has fallen off the Forbes list.
Lebedev, 49, made his money in banking and insurance and
has built a reputation as a philanthropist and champion of
independent media.
As an intelligence agent, he served in the Soviet embassy
in London in the 1980s. He has said that one of his main
tasks was to read British newspapers and report on their
contents, developing a particular fondness for the
Standard.


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