I am reliably informed by my Media Guardian colleagues that a large slice of the London Evening Standard may be in the process of being sold by the Daily Mail & General Trust to a Russian billionaire, Alexander Lebedev.
I have no inside track on this whatsoever, despite writing a weekly media column for the Standard (and perhaps because of it). Rumours are flying of course. That goes with the territory.
I admit to being shocked. I have always believed that DMGT's chairman, Lord Rothermere, and his wife were committed to holding on to the Standard, in spite of its losses and the difficulties exacerbated by vastly expensive intrusion of the free newspaper war. But money, clearly, has talked.
Anyway, I did say some time ago that what ailing British newspapers required was the injection of cash, care and attention from wealthy outsiders, such as a Russian oligarch. So it apparently comes to pass.
I know little about Lebedev's publishing capabilities. But any man who has backed Novaya Gazeta, an anti-Kremlin paper that dared to publish the work of the late Anna Politkovskaya, is worthy of some attention.
Will he stop at the Standard though? Running a metropolitan title is all very well, but surely he would also want a national voice. Could The Independent, soon to hunker down with the Standard at DMGT's Kensington office, be next on his media shopping list?
