The days of the Evening Standard being available in time for lunchtime reading are to end. The Guardian reports:
From 4 January, the Evening Standard's first edition will be the West End Final, hitting the street from 2pm. The Evening Standard said that it was unable to deliver the most up-to-date news because the News Extra first edition, which delivers about half of the 600,000 total daily distribution, goes to press at 9am to hit the streets at midday...Stories will be updated throughout the afternoon with a "slip" edition out in the late afternoon.
Sadly, a further 20 jobs will go. There's also an interesting claim from editor Geordie Greig:
[He] added that the shift to free distribution had had a dramatic iimpact in some areas, such as Holborn, which has gone from a 700 paid-for circulation to more than 10,000 a day under free distribution. "The demand for the paper has been exponential," he added, saying that he was "very happy" with circulation maintained at 600,000 for the foreseeable future.
I've certainly noticed the free paper doing good business outside Liverpool Street station, Temple underground and elsewhere. The other side of the story is that the lady who runs the kiosk outside Angel tube was very fed up with the Standard when I asked her about it a few weeks ago ("they don't distribute it to me any more and they never even told me it was going free") and I can't get a copy locally any more without making a special effort.
Swings and roundabouts, I suppose, for this bold experiment, though when Greig says the latest change is to provide better news coverage for commuters I find I'm recalling the anti-London mindset of the old regime. Sorry.
