psmith, journalist

The Indy could soon be changing hands and dropping its £1 coverprice down to nothing. BBC business editor Robert Peston has been speaking to people close to Evening Standard owner and former KGB spy Alexander Lebedev and he says…

They confirm that he remains in deadly earnest about buying the Independent and – more germanely – that he would turn it into a free newspaper.

Independent News & Media confirmed late last year that it has entered talks with Lebedev over a sale (via PCUK). Pesto says this should worry The Guardian and other quality papers greatly: a free Indy would spark a price war that could disrupt every title from the Times to the Mail.

Leb managed to see off London Lite and thelondonpaper by taking the Standard free. So are news execs quaking in their boots?

Not so fast.

Because of the historic importance and remaining – I would say disproportionate – political clout that print newspapers have, the economic movements of the main “Fleet Street” print titles tend to be used as bellwethers for the future of the entire industry. But a free Indy wouldn’t affect the industry’s attempts to bring more revenue in online at all:

• The Guardian and The Telegraph are betting on online mobile device readership boosting fortunes in the next 24 months,
• News International is hoping to charge readers to read Times Online and Sun Online with a system of micropayments and vertical-specific subscriptions,
• Several titles are hoping to entice readers into paying for products via readers’ clubs/loyalty schemes in 2010, The Times and The Guardian being just two.

The monetisation of consumer news brands has moved far beyond the newsstand: print still matters for many reasons, and still makes up the lion’s share of income, but another free newspaper to compete with shouldn’t de-rail the quality papers’ online plans. Even if print circulation does decline – something exacerbated by DMGT’s free national Metro paper in the last decade – that could only serve to accelerate the promotion of new platforms.

The question for Leb – if he does buy the Indy – won’t be how to beat the UK print competition, but wether he’s prepared to invest his roubles in making the Indy a genuine worldwide digital competitor.

picture from its_daniel from Flickr, via CC licence.