Indy Lessons

You can keep your ‘print is dead’ headlines. In the wake of The Independent’s digital bombshell, I’ve lost count of how many people have sent me links to content fodder, mansplaining the death of the newspaper.

Last year, I poured every resource I had to start a local monthly print title. For me, print certainly doesn’t die here — but The Independent brand certainly does.

Differentiation

Just like any industry, the players who fail to break from the pack will inevitably compete their way to oblivion. I’ve dipped in and out of The Indy for years, especially after their most recent redesign (which made it one of the most beautifully constructed newspapers in the world — fact), but it never retained my affections for long. I never felt like I was getting an absolutely essential briefing — information only available to the Indy reader.

This isn’t a problem specific to The Independent — one of my personal bugbears with most national newspapers is just how bland the whole exercise has become. If fully half your paper is agency piece after agency piece that we all read on Twitter the previous evening, then why buy the paper at all? To my mind, The Indy failed to re-align what worked in print with what we already knew from social. But the brand’s digital story only gets worse.

#content

For me, the real death of The Independent brand was played out digitally. In its awkward transition to digital, akin the to the public growing pains of puberty, The Indy entered the content rat race.

Content killed the brand. Instead of intelligent, considered journalism, The Independent’s real voice was drowned out with some of the internet’s most inane, carbon-copy click-bait.

There’s a major, major lesson for established titles here. Why should your digital voice diverge so radically from your print ethos? There’s a reason people buy your paper every day, and it’s not because you were quick-off-the-mark with a Gilmore Girls listicle the other day. We are just as discerning online as we are in print (a casual scroll through any Instagram feed will surely back this up) — we increasingly expect better quality .

Your digital destination is your face to the world. It is your statement of intent. Frankly, if you’re going to join the content rat race at the expense of your well-honed reputation for fantastic journalism, then what is the point of you?

At this rate, a digital-only Indy will only precipitate this decline.

So, stop sending me ‘print is dead’ click-bait. Print isn’t dying — but we shouldn’t let The Indy’s story drag others down with it.