The most profitable bit of the company, the i, a millennial-oriented cheapsheet spun off from the Independent in 2010, is to be sold to the Johnston Press, a regional publisher, for £24m ($35m). Fifty or so Independent hacks are expected to move with it. The i’s success, establishing a circulation of more than 200,000, had put the Independent closer to breaking even. But its owners, a Russian KGB-man turned banker, Alexander Lebedev, and his son, Evgeny, came to see paid-for, general-interest daily print titles as a losing proposition. In the long run, such newspapers are “toast”, says Amol Rajan, the Independent’s editor.
