Now i has gained its own website. The daily, owned since Monday by Johnston Press, launched inews.co.uk on Thursday.
It’s not the most sparkling of sites and the most striking thing about it is its similarity, in terms of design and content, with its former big sister, independent.co.uk.
As with the Indy site, there are labels that are hardly reader-friendly for the swift surfer: “essentials, explainers, distractions, opinion.”
Opinion? In the i? Yes, but not a lot. Among the offerings are a piece by Labour MP Jess Phillips, arguing that David Cameron is to blame for the closure of women’s refuges; a good column by Simon Kelner about John Whittingdale’s love life being none of our business; an article about stress; and readers’ letters.
Oly Duff, i’s editor, does his best to boost the online accompaniment to his newsprint paper. He writes:
“We have always aimed to give you a newspaper that’s based on quality, brevity and independence. Online, that’s no different...
We will aim to deliver the same essential briefing you’ve come to expect from us, but with extra features like explainers of the big issues and videos that get to the point.”
He contends that it is easier to say what the website is not: “It isn’t another bloated national newspaper website. It isn’t a rolling 24-hour breaking news feed. It isn’t crammed full of celebrity gossip.”
He goes on to tell readers how to locate the content under its various labels, explaining that “the essential five” are “the top five stories of the moment” while “the news matrix” is “the Day at a glance.”
Like the i itself, it may surprise us by attracting an audience. But there is much less content than on the Independent’s site, which is now part of the online competition, and it is hard to imagine it building a substantial regular following.
No rolling news is not one of the great selling points for modern news websites, after all.
