Initial findings on ‘i’ by the Snipe commission on New Newspaper Launches

The Snipe morning shift was on Oxford Street at 6am seeking a copy of i, the new offshoot from the Independent, which it claims is the first new daily launch in 25 years. Although CityAM is definitely a daily and launched only five years ago. And let’s not forget Metro, launched just over ten years ago.

Sure, they are free newspapers – but so is the Evening Standard. Cover price should no longer be the dividing line.

Of course, the question must be asked: why isn’t i free? 20p doesn’t come close to the cost of printing it (a back of the envelope calculation by us figures 50p per copy in print costs.) The Snipe Commission on New Newspaper Launches (SCNNL) says it’s all about distribution. i is intended to be a national publication and while it is normal to have people giving out free copies on the streets and at tubes in London, what can they do in Milton Keynes or Aberdeen? A minimal cover price means stocking in newsagents nationwide.

The publisher is also concerned about cannibalising the Independent. Because frankly, i is the Independent, with each story cut off at 600 words. If you like the Indy, you’ll probably love i. If you stopped reading the Indy 15 years ago, you’re probably in the majority.

This umbilical cord to the Indy also means that i does not have its own website. This is probably not an oversight or a mistake. The SCNNL believes the ultimate goal is a reverse take over of the Independent by i. A year or two down the road, will we be surprised if the i is renamed the Independent and the Indy gains a new lease on life, without the shame of appearing to drop its price from £1 to 20p?

But that is enough introduction, let’s walk through i page by page. Click on the photo for a slightly larger photo.

PAGE 1

The front page is surprisingly weak in story choice, but we’ll give them good marks for the design. Clean, modern.

But really, i, ‘Is Bert gay?’ That was an old meme even when the last daily paper was launched, whenever it was. And Mel Gibson? Hot like last week’s tea.

We do like the feature front, ‘The Housing Crisis of Coalition Britain’, but the photo is a snoozer. Especially for a launch.

The slogan on price, ‘You won’t need a deposit’ is idiotic. You don’t need a deposit for a £1 newspaper either.

PAGE 2-3

The first of the ‘matrixes,’ which the editor touts as a defining feature of i is known in every other newspaper as ‘news in brief.’

The dominant photo is of Jeremy Clarkson, which, like Mel Gibson on the front page and Elton John on page 3, is showing the cultural age of the editors.

PAGE 4-5

Page 5 has the first actual news page. Again, ‘… first time buyers are priced out’ is not exactly a scoop. But we do like the analysis box embedded in the story. This is replicated throughout i and can be considered one of their innovations®.

Likewise, many articles have a little factoid box attached to them. A necessary evil – they do their job well at attracting eyeballs.

PAGE 6-7

Michael Jackson? Is there no-one on staff who listens to anything other than Radio 2?

Oooh, Denmark £9. Of course, it’s Ryanair so the airport is possibly in Kurdistan.

PAGE 8-9

Good god, another picture of Clarkson. However, the five-clue cryptic crossword is hilarious. Tube-ride crossword is innovation® #2.

PAGE 10-11

The gay Bert and Ernie story is fucking idiotic and is someone’s idea of being, oh, let’s call it for what they want it to be, edgy.

But it’s the story on page 11 that stops the SCONNL short.

The headline is “Nazi foreign ministry ‘backed holocaust.’”

Yes. Way to get a scoop, i.

But then we start reading the story. “A shocking study published this week will cast a shadow over Nazi Germany’s foreign ministry….”

A shadow? Over the Nazis? Nevermind, they’re rolling.

“….which until now has been regarded as the Third Reich’s only “decent” government department and one which shunned the persecution of Jewish people.”

What the fuck? Would this be the foreign ministry headed by Joachim von Ribbentrop who was executed after Nuremberg for war crimes, including… we can’t go on. Apparently, David Irving is a correspondent on i.

The next story, about the hiccup girl who became a murderer, we would have played up more. A few days ago.

PAGE 12-13

The opinion matrix is a weird duck. They’ve combined The Week’s condensations of opinions with news-brief-on-a-map that you’ve seen everywhere. We’re not sold that we care what the Aussies think.

We’re always glad to see Johann Hari, and thrilled that he gets a full page. This article in particular, however, continues to demonstrate British media’s difficulty in covering US politics properly. Hari seems to think a US president can act like a Westmister-style Prime Minister.

PAGE 14-15

Page 14 is just a reprint of stuff from around the net. Please see the Snipe.at blog for more.

Page 15 is entitled ‘Caught & Social.’ We don’t get it either.

PAGE 16-17

i is running a cartoon called As If, which is fine, but they missed a great opportunity to run Em now homeless since the closure of TheLondonPaper.

PAGE 18-19

Whatever.

PAGE 20-21

Whatever.

PAGE 22-23

Whatever.

PAGE 24-25

God, it goes on.

PAGE 26-27

i has run the ‘Walkman is history story.’ Is i selling the prototype edition that they printed to demonstrate proof of concept, because we can’t figure out why this story is here.

PAGE 28-29

Let’s call the telly grid innovation® number three. It lists shows by genre, rather than channel. We don’t think it is useful but we haven’t seen this done before, so kudos for imagination.

PAGE 30-31

Zach Galifianakis, who gets a small photo on this Mel page, would be a much better subject of a story for i’s intended demographic. Just saying.

PAGE 32-33

No one here read this.

PAGE 34-35

Who can argue with a top ten list?

PAGE 36-37

Nothing new to see here – but wasn’t the musical biopic story popular in 2005? This seems like another one from the prototype.

PAGE 38-39

If the arts gallery photo of Lauren Cuthbertson had been a full page, it would have been delightful. Surely, the Carpetright ad could have been moved elsewhere, maybe replacing a Clarkson.

PAGE 40-41

Apparently, Scotland doesn’t deserve a nice weather map.

PAGE 42-43

PAGE 44-45

If you can tell the difference between the i business section and the Evening Standard’s business section, you are better than the SCNNL.

PAGE 46-47

PAGE 48-49

PAGE 50-51

PAGE 52-53

PAGE 54-55

Sport is the largest section. No comment.

PAGE 56

Where does this leave us? In the considered opinion of the Snipe Commission on New Newspaper Launches, i is a far superior product than Metro. But i isn’t free, and, is that difference between 20p and £1 all that really stands between people buying a paper or not?

The SCNNL finds as follows:

1. After the initial flurry of interest, we don’t expect sales to be anything significant
2. We expect i to be released as a free paper very soon, and we would not be surprised to discover that that was the plan all along
3. We expect a merger of i and the Independent in the near future

Here are some other views:

i think therefore i am unwanted [The Great Wen]
Aye aye, it’s ‘i’ [853]
i lives up to its name – it’s a digest of its big brother, like an upmarket Metro [Roy Greenslade]
Design review of ‘i’ [This Is Pop]

East London pubs with grisly histories

Snipe has rather enjoyed both series of Whitechapel, ITV1’s absolutely ludicrous pantomime reworking of real life London murders. In honour of last night’s farcical Kray-based finale (the detective having a boxing match with the chief suspect? Not sure what the IPCC are going to make of that), here are five East London pubs which have grim, violent and utterly compelling histories.

The Blind Beggar, Whitechapel
Read the oft-told Kray history at the link above. Snipe needs this space for this lengthy, tangentially connected Alan Partridge quote. “Cockney, Sonja, is an area of London where criminals live. The police don’t arrest them because – and they are strict about this – they only slaughter their own, and they have funerals with horses and floral tributes that say things like: ‘mum’ and ‘stab’”. More Partridge here.

The Ten Bells, Spitalfields
Now, this is actually a great venue for a date because there’s some great Ripper history to chat about, the ambient lighting is superb and there are lots of cool bars nearby you can shimmy to later. Only problem, but a significant one, is the difficulty of getting a seat.

Top O’ The Morning, Bow
Cool location at the artier, Hackney Wick end of Victoria Park. And the murder? Well, when you hear that the killer stole his victim’s hat, altered it a little, and that in the resulting notoriety of the trial it became a fashionable garment popular with such notable peeps as Winston Churchill…can you truly say you are not intrigued? Said hat, named after the killer, is still available to buy to this day from this source. Murder, fashion, pubs, trains, a key witness called Death – this case had it all.

Crown and Dolphin, Wapping
This is an ex-pub, but it marks a notable spot in one of the most famous London murders of them all. The body of the executed Radcliff(e) Highway murderer (suspected) was dragged to the crossroads where this pub later stood, and a stake was driven through his heart. The man’s skull was later exhumed and exhibited in the pub for much of the 20th century. PD James co-wrote a cracking book about the whole case and its important social consequences, which is about to be reprinted and which Snipe ghoulishly recommends.

The Prospect of Whitby, Wapping
Any pub with a replica gallows out back must be worth a visit. This is one of London’s most fascinating pubs, whose varied history taking in Dickens, hanging judges and fuschia plants, is whipped through here. According to that link, Pepys and Doré both drank there in their day, which allows a guilt free link to this historical Top 5 from last week. Everything is connected.

London agenda for Tuesday 26 October

London agenda for Tuesday 26 October
1. For all those who love jazzy beats and R&B ballads along the lines of Maxwell, Musiqsoulchild and Jon B, it’s Jelone [Le Cool]
2. A show about what to do if you’re unhappy and everyone around you is kind of an asshole, including yourself. That’s Pullman, WA [Run Riot]
3. Buy books at Pages of Hackney [Tired of London]

Kitsuné Maison

Kitsuné have released a self-proclaimed “viral video”, in which a pretty girl and handsome boy take their clothes on and off to decent contemporary dance choons. What’s not to like?

Chief rock critic Peter Paphides quits the Times

Councils moving poor people out of London - way out of London

People who are homeless, or at risk, and want some help from their local council can start packing their bags for Hastings, Watford, Slough, Reading and Luton.

Because the emergency budget has changed the housing benefit, councils are looking to send their low income tenants somewhere far away and cheap. Beginning April 2011, housing benefit limits the amount paid per bedroom, and limits the total amount to 30 per cent of value of rents in the area. Outer London rents are expensive but Inner London is ridiculous. But at least the rich don’t have to mingle with the poor much longer!

Councils to move LHA claimants out of London [Inside Housing]

'The Only Way is Essex' is sponsored, rightly, by a herpes cream

Of course it’s wrong to malign an entire county, an entire people, based on a hateful stereotype. But the market has spoken, and ITV2’s new programme about loud, stilletto’d, orange people in Essex is the perfect way for cold sore medicine maker Cymex to reach its target psychographic.

London parks for rustling leaves

Autumn leaves are cool. So many great colours, all with names as pretty as the shades they describe: russet, magenta, castaneous, erythraean, filemot (check out this brilliant list of obscure colour names for more where those beauties came from). Here are 5 London spots currently strewn with pretty leaves just waiting to be kicked and rustled like crazy.

Queen’s Park
A welcome patch of green in a very busy part of Brent. This picture gives you a good idea of the sort of leaf coverage you can expect. Don’t tell Snipe you’re not a hustlin’ for some rustlin’ just looking at it.

London Fields
Snipe gave some leaves in London Fields a good kicking only yesterday. Works especially well if you imagine them to be the faces of the twats who usually frequent the area.

Kensington Gardens
Those of you without a proper job should check out the guided autumn walk round Kensington Gardens this Thursday Oct 28. Booking required. Those of you with proper jobs could pop down this weekend, weather permitting, and guide yourselves.

Kew Gardens
Bit of an obvious one, but worth including all the same. There’s still an autumn festival going on until the end of October. It seems to be aimed at kids, but if you tell them you’re just there to kick some leaves then surely they’ll understand.

Highgate Wood
Not a park, a full on wood. Get lost in here, have a chat with some squirrels, pretend you’re not in a pollution choked urban hell hole. Who could resist?

Apropos of very little, the London Transport Museum has some very lovely autumnal posters in its online collection, ranging from turn of the century classical designs through art deco and full on modernism. Snipe likes.

London agenda for Monday 25 October

London agenda for Monday 25 October

1. Tango to the Gotan Project Afterparty [Le Cool]
2. Stock up on nautical supplies at Arthur Beale Ltd [Tired of London]
3. Time-warped to some ’60s acid party hosted by The Vinyl Stitches + Sniffin Flowers [Spoonfed]

Miral

Julian Schnabel has more than impressed, actually he has excelled in his past features, all biopics of wildly varied personalities and very different nationalities. First there was his contemporary, and fellow New Yorker, Jean-Michel Basquiat, for whom he made 1996’s ebullient Basquiat. He followed up with an Oscar-nominated performance from Javier Bardem in the Cuban-set Reinaldo Arenas biography, Before Night Falls (2000), before picking up more Academy award nominations and the Best Director gong at Cannes with The Diving Bell and the Butterfly (2007).

Now Schnabel has transported his considerable skill to the Middle East. And unfortunately, it is with little or no impact. Too poorly informed to be a serious political film, too aware of its own possible significance in having any impact, and too clumsily written to be a comprehensive biography, Miral is simply a disappointment for what could have been a great cinematic statement. It’s like Schnabel finally wants to claim an Oscar for himself, by making a film that looks brave but only on the surface.