Whether your allegiance was London Lite or Thelondonpaper, the journey home for many Londoners has become less colourful since the closure of both long-standing freesheets.
I, for one, used to quite enjoy reading Thelondonpaper. Finding out about Sarah Harding or a Geldof’s nightly exploits became rather addictive reading after a long day in the office. However, in the five months since tlp closed, I haven’t quite found anything to fill the gap, so I’m intrigued to find out what the mysterious forthcoming London Weekly has to offer.
A quick trawl of its site reveals a rudimentary selection of news stories, but it’s the celebrity ticker at the top that gets my attention. Calling itself ‘fresh press’, London Weekly is a great idea for those of us hungry for the latest celebrity news. Unfortunately, further investigation leaves me expecting more after being directed to the ‘news’ that the Gallagher brothers still aren’t speaking to each other.
So what more can we learn? Alas, not much. There’s no launch date on the site, though other sources claim it will hit our streets on 1 February. It’s certainly ambitious, aiming to give away 250k copies a week on Fridays and Saturdays outside Tube and railway stations with regional editions planned by 2012. Other than that, we’re left none the wiser.
The challenge for any freesheet is that they need to be all things to all people. Metro’s concise mix of news, sport and celebrity has been a nationwide success story. Yet despite their best efforts, the giants of UK newspaper publishing, Associated and News International, couldn’t crack the London market. The newly free Evening Standard is having a good stab at it, but has anyone managed to pick up a copy after 6.30pm? A free paper backed by five private equity investors might provide what Londoners are looking for, but at the moment, they’re not giving much away.
I loved the londonpaper – especially the columnists, but I still follow their blogs online so maybe it’s just forcing us to widen our media intake?