The Independent
[7][8] It was produced by Newspaper Publishing plc and created by Andreas Whittam Smith, Stephen Glover and Matthew Symonds.As a result of controversy around Murdoch's move to Wapping, the plant was effectively having to function under siege from sacked print workers picketing outside.It featured spoofs of the other papers' mastheads with the words The Rupert Murdoch or The Conrad Black, with The Independent below the main title.Marr introduced a dramatic if short-lived redesign which won critical favor but was a commercial failure, partly as a result of a limited promotional budget.[12] Ivan Fallon, on the board since 1995 and formerly a key figure at The Sunday Times, replaced Hopkins as head of Independent News & Media in July 2002.[13] The two newspaper groups' editorial, management and commercial operations remained separate, but they shared services including security, information technology, switchboard and payroll.[18] In January 2012, Chris Blackhurst, editor of The Independent, told the Leveson inquiry that the scandal had "severely damaged" the newspaper's reputation.[21] The historian Guy Walters suggested that Hari's fabrications had been an open secret among the newspaper's staff and that their internal inquiry was a "facesaving exercise".[citation needed] The Independent on Sunday published its last simultaneous broadsheet on 9 October 2005, and thereafter followed a compact design until the print edition was discontinued.In June 2007, The Independent on Sunday consolidated its content into a news section which included sports and business, and a magazine focusing on life and culture.[37] On 23 September 2008, the main newspaper became full-color, and "Extra" was replaced by an "Independent Life Supplement" focusing on different themes each day.[39] Following the 2003 switch in format, The Independent became known for its unorthodox and campaigning front pages, which frequently relied on images, graphics or lists rather than traditional headlines and written news content.[42] Under the subsequent editorship of Chris Blackhurst, the campaigning, poster-style front pages were scaled back in favor of more conventional news stories.[citation needed] In 2014, The Independent launched a sister website, i100, a "shareable" journalism site with similarities to Reddit and Upworthy.It has been seen as leaning to the left-wing of the political spectrum, making it more a competitor to The Guardian; however, The Independent tends to take a liberal, pro-market stance on economic issues.Ten years later, it reversed itself, arguing that skunk, the cannabis strain "smoked by the majority of young Britons" in 2007, had become "25 times stronger than resin sold a decade ago".[63] In 2007, Alan Rusbridger, editor of The Guardian, said of The Independent: "The emphasis on views, not news, means that the reporting is rather thin, and it loses impact on the front page the more you do that".[64] In a 12 June 2007 speech, British Prime Minister Tony Blair called The Independent a "viewspaper", saying it "was started as an antidote to the idea of journalism as views not news.[65] The Independent criticised Blair's comments the following day;[66][67] it later changed format to include a "Viewspaper" insert in the centre of the regular newspaper, designed to feature most of the opinion columns and arts reviews.[70] On the eve of the 2010 general election, The Independent supported the Liberal Democrats, arguing that "they are longstanding and convincing champions of civil liberties, sound economics, international co-operation on the great global challenges and, of course, fundamental electoral reform."[59] However, before the 2015 United Kingdom general election, The Independent on Sunday desisted from advising its readers how to vote, writing that "this does not mean that we are a bloodless, value-free news-sheet.[72] At the end of July 2018, The Independent led a campaign they called the "Final Say", a change.org petition by former editor Christian Broughton, for a binding referendum on the Brexit deal between the UK and the European Union.