The case of The Independent is a sorry one. It hasn't returned a profit since the Chinese invented paper, and in recent years has hardly been a newspaper at all. Its lead stories are often magazine-style articles about some far away calamity. All very noble, but of little interest to most casual readers browsing the titles on offer at the news-stand. Okay, I'll call it. It's just a cheaply-printed magazine with some news thrown in.
Lebedev's purchase of the title may actually reverse the fortunes of The Independent. He has the financial clout to throw sacks of saffron at the paper, and there is even talk of his replicating the regeneration of The Evening Standard by offering copies of the paper for free. So far so shiny.
But what worries me is that - in an age when every newspaper carries its own editorial baggage (I'd cite The Guardian as an exception, but I'd be wrong to, frankly) - The Independent may cease to feel quite so independent.
Perhaps this entrenched bias is why the intelligentsia are hooked on the modern 'spheres'; the blogosphere, twittersphere et al. Whilst every commentator here has his own bias, it's largely self-proclaimed. (Disclosure: I'm in the Social Democratic wing of the Lib Dems) That allows for an amount of easy rational discernment on the part of the reader.
Given the amount of hyperbole, fabrication, embellishment and lying that thrives in the newspapers, it's no wonder that today's savvy
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