The Independent made its name a statement of intent. Launched as a national morning newspaper on 7 October 1986, it promised readers a publication distinct from papers shaped by proprietorial interests. Its first advertising slogan, “It is. Are you?”, turned that ambition into a direct challenge. Nearly 30 years later, on 26 March 2016, the newspaper published its final printed edition and continued online. The change closed one chapter of a British newspaper’s history without ending the title.
A new paper in a changing press
The Independent was created by Andreas Whittam Smith, Stephen Glover and Matthew Symonds, all former journalists at The Daily Telegraph. They had left towards the end of Lord Hartwell’s ownership. The paper was produced by Newspaper Publishing plc, with Marcus Sieff as its first chairman and Whittam Smith taking control of the newspaper.
The founders entered a press undergoing fundamental change. Rupert Murdoch was challenging established print-union practices in the Wapping dispute; the eventual reduction in production costs created openings for competition. The Independent recruited some staff from the two Murdoch-owned broadsheets who had chosen not to move to the company’s new headquarters. Its launch slogan, “It is. Are you?”, was accompanied by an appeal to readers of both The Guardian and The Times: the paper sought to attract centre-left readers while also challenging The Times as a newspaper of record. By 1989, its circulation had exceeded 400,000.
That early growth did not guarantee an easy path. The Independent on Sunday launched in 1990, but its sales were lower than anticipated. In the 1990s, The Independent used advertising to attack the idea that newspapers reflected the views of their proprietors, parodying the mastheads of The Times and The Daily Telegraph. In 1994, Tony O’Reilly’s media group and Mirror Group Newspapers each acquired stakes of about a third in the business. A restructuring in March 1995 divided the shareholding principally between O’Reilly’s Independent News & Media and Mirror Group Newspapers, with Prisa, publisher of El País, holding a smaller share.
Formats, editors and financial pressure
The paper began as a broadsheet and later experimented with its physical form. In September 2003, it introduced a compact edition alongside the broadsheet, with the same content in each. Calling the smaller version “compact” distinguished its size from the sensationalist associations of the word “tabloid”; the paper said it wanted to retain a focus on hard news. The compact format was gradually introduced across the UK. In May 2004, the weekday broadsheet ended, and the Sunday title also adopted a compact design before its eventual closure.
Design and presentation became part of the paper’s public identity. It was redesigned in 2005, and in 2006 it introduced Extra, a section of features, reportage and games. In 2008, the main paper became full-colour, while a supplement later replaced Extra. After Alexander and Evgeny Lebedev acquired the paper in 2010, another relaunch brought smaller headlines and a pull-out section called Viewspaper, containing comment and feature articles.
The company’s history also included recurring financial strain and changes of ownership. Circulation had fallen below 200,000 by 1998, and efforts to increase it brought redesigns, job cuts and financial controls. The newspaper was losing £5 million a year by mid-2004, although circulation later improved to a nine-year high in 2006. In 2008, production moved to Northcliffe House in Kensington, while the editorial, management and commercial operations of the two newspaper groups remained separate. In March 2010, Independent News & Media sold the newspaper to a new company owned by the Lebedev family for a nominal £1 and a further £9.25 million over the following ten months.
Reporting, campaigns and contested judgement
The paper’s identity was not confined to its slogans. From 2003, its front pages became known for campaigning designs that often used images, graphics or lists in place of conventional headlines. After the 2005 Kashmir earthquake, a front page urged readers to donate to the newspaper’s appeal fund. Following publication of the Hutton Report into the death of government scientist David Kelly, a front page carried the single word “Whitewash?”. Simon Kelner received the 2003 “Editor of the Year” award at the What the Papers Say awards, with the judges citing arresting and imaginative front-page designs. Later, under Chris Blackhurst, the poster-style approach was scaled back in favour of more conventional news stories.
The Independent’s political descriptions have varied: it has been characterised as centrist, centre-left and liberal-left, with a liberal, pro-market position on economic issues. It did not endorse a party in the 1987 and 1992 general elections, but endorsed Labour in 1997 and made endorsements in later contests. It supported Remain in the Brexit referendum. These shifts make its history more complicated than a simple account of a paper wholly outside political argument. Its declared independence is a founding aspiration; the editorial choices and positions recorded over time provide a more specific picture of how the paper participated in public debate.
That record includes difficult episodes as well as campaigns. In 2011, columnist Johann Hari was stripped of the Orwell Prize he had won in 2008 after claims of plagiarism and inaccuracy, which he later admitted. The following year, editor Chris Blackhurst told the Leveson inquiry that the scandal had severely damaged the newspaper’s reputation. Hari did not return as a columnist. This episode does not define the whole paper, but it is part of the evidence against treating a stated commitment to independence as a guarantee of flawless journalism.
Closing the print edition
The Independent’s original website launched in 1996 and was relaunched in January 2008. In March 2016, the company closed the print edition and became an online-only newspaper. Its last printed issue appeared on Saturday 26 March; The Independent on Sunday had published its final edition on 20 March. The transition was therefore not simply the addition of a website to a continuing print paper: it ended regular publication of both titles on paper.
Digital publishing had already become part of the paper’s work. The site began carrying short video news bulletins from Al Jazeera English in 2009. The Independent launched Independent TV in 2020, and in 2023 it released The Body in the Woods, a feature-length documentary by chief international correspondent Bel Trew about the war in Ukraine. These developments show a change in the forms through which the publication delivered journalism, from a printed daily to web, mobile and video output.
The title continued to develop its international and digital operations. Independent Arabia launched in 2018 under licence, published and managed by Saudi Research and Media Group. A Spanish-language edition, Independent en Español, followed in 2020. In 2024, the company agreed a multi-year licensing deal to take over BuzzFeed and HuffPost in the UK. Such ventures extend the story beyond the one-time decision to cease printing: the newspaper’s later history has involved multiple editions and publishing arrangements.
Why The Independent deserves a place in British Legacy
The Independent belongs in British Legacy because its history records both a distinctive founding proposition and consequential changes in the British newspaper business. Its founders—Andreas Whittam Smith, Stephen Glover and Matthew Symonds—launched it in 1986 as a national daily at a moment when production practices and ownership were reshaping the press. The paper’s name, slogan and early challenge to proprietorial influence gave readers a clear account of what it hoped to offer. Its circulation growth, compact-format experiment and visually striking campaigning front pages show how that new entrant sought to compete and communicate. The record also includes financial pressure, changes of ownership and a serious journalistic scandal: remembering the paper honestly means keeping those complexities alongside its ambitions.
Its 2016 decision to end print is another reason for its place in this history. The last printed edition marked a concrete change in how a long-running national newspaper reached its readers, while subsequent online, video and language-edition initiatives show the publication continuing in altered forms. That account is more meaningful than an unsupported claim that digital publication automatically meant success. The Independent’s documented trajectory—from a British print launch to an online-only newspaper with later digital projects—offers a specific case study in the pressures and possibilities facing journalism. Its legacy lies not in a claim to be free of influence or error, but in the record of a paper that made independence its founding argument and repeatedly changed its format and reach as the media landscape changed.
Sources
The Independent — supplied Wikipedia revision
Adapted in part from The Independent by Wikipedia contributors, under CC BY-SA 4.0. Text has been edited and combined with the existing article; this adapted text is shared under the same licence. Contributor history.