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    End of the line for the Lite

    Due to close in a month or so:

    http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/8212132.stm

    As a commuter I'll miss it as it usually lasts for my tube journey round to West Ham in the evening. But the truth is, there isn't an awful lot in it or its rival the Lite.

    Can the London Lite really survive in the current climate though? I mean, if the London Paper can't survive, how does a free newspaper survive particularly when it is London only. The Metro is pretty much UK wide now so has a different coverage.

    #2
    End of the line for the Lite

    It's a shame that there'll be job-losses but the sooner all of these awful, reactionary crap-sheets fail, the better as far as I'm concerned. The politics of them are deeply unpleasant and they are an appalling waste of resources and a source of literally tons of unneccessary waste.
    Want to read something on the tube? Buy a paper. Or a book.

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      #3
      End of the line for the Lite

      Yeah, what Hobbes said. And frankly, if it lasts for your entire tube journey to West Ham, I can only assume you get on at Bromley-by-Bow.

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        #4
        End of the line for the Lite

        Yep, it's good riddance from me too. With any luck, its fellow rag the London Litter will follow hot on its heels.

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          #5
          End of the line for the Lite

          I do Southwark - West Ham in the evening and truth be told it doesn't even last that. I've normally finished it by Canary Wharf and that's on a good day.

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            #6
            End of the line for the Lite

            The streets - and minds - of London will be cleaner for their passing. Just a shame about the job losses, of course.

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              #7
              End of the line for the Lite

              Actually, having said that, we get 'Metro' out here in the commuter belt and that is every bit as bad in all aspects.

              The increasing media capabilities of portable devices should have signalled enough of a warning to these companies to make them reconsider their emphasis. I hope that some of those people losing their jobs might, in fact, get re-assigned to those (online media) areas. Unlikey though, I think.

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                #8
                End of the line for the Lite

                Is that a freesheet? With a few exceptions, these things are doing greater harm to traditional newspapers and journalism in general than does the Internet.

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                  #9
                  End of the line for the Lite

                  G-Man: aye, it's a Murdoch freesheet, and is to all intents and purposes an even more dumbed-down, reactionary version of the Sun.

                  There's also a freesheet called London Lite, which is a scaled-down version of the equally poor Evening Standard.

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                    #10
                    End of the line for the Lite

                    I agree. I'd like to see some figures contrasting newspaper sales before the explosion of freesheets (which was circa the middle of this decade) and afterwards. The internet's been glibly blamed for a lot, but I suspect crap freesheets have a lot to do with it too.

                    That said, all job losses are bad things and I doubt Murdoch's the sort of employer who'll redeploy sacked staff elsewhere.

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                      #11
                      End of the line for the Lite

                      Yeah, I'm sure that's the case (in London, at least, what with so many people relying on public transport there).

                      The London Paper was much nastier than the Metro; I won't miss it at all.

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                        #12
                        End of the line for the Lite

                        By the way, I ought to make it clear that I'm not 'blaming the internet' for the decline of papers. I'm just saying that it seemed obvious (at just the time these free papers proliferated) that there was going to be - perhaps already was - a huge shift in the way everyday news was presented and dispersed, i.e. electronically.

                        I imagine that the free papers were a reaction to that but, if so, they were a remarkably poorly conceived one - that's what I really mean.

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                          #13
                          End of the line for the Lite

                          However crap the freebies might be, you could say that they do get people who might never have bought a paper in their life actually reading. This is very true in Lisbon - loads of people on the train in and on the Metro have thir nose in one. Yes, it would be better if they read a 'serious' paper, but I'd say it's better than nothing.

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                            #14
                            End of the line for the Lite

                            Oh dear. What will I do without my daily fix of the hilarious cartoon strip 'Em'?

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                              #15
                              End of the line for the Lite

                              "Yes, it would be better if they read a 'serious' paper, but I'd say it's better than nothing."

                              Bollocks. Reading nothing is better than reading these reactionary celebrity culture promoting arsewipe rags.

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                                #16
                                End of the line for the Lite

                                Amen brother.
                                It's like saying it's better eating deep fried vegetables than no vegetables at all.

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                                  #17
                                  End of the line for the Lite

                                  Thirded. There's nothing improving whatsoever about these malignant, vomitous wastes of perfectly good trees.

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                                    #18
                                    End of the line for the Lite

                                    How will I find out what nightclub Lily Allen went to last night now?

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                                      #19
                                      End of the line for the Lite

                                      She'll Tweet about it and it will then be covered in detail by The Guardian

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                                        #20
                                        End of the line for the Lite

                                        Ah ... I must admit I don't know those London papers.

                                        The Lisbon ones (Global, Metro, Destak, Meia Hora) all have 'real' news content which, although superficial, is handled neutrally enough. And I can see the value in people who wouldn't normally read a paper finding out a bit about what's going on in the world (not just the colour of Lily Allen's knickers).

                                        Carry on with your trashing of the London ones, all.

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                                          #21
                                          End of the line for the Lite

                                          I only ever used to read the 'seen someone you fancy on the tube' ads, because I love them. 'Were you the blonde who dropped your chips on the top deck of the N68 last Wednesday? I was the guy on the seat behind you with sick down my front. Drink?'

                                          But I hated the london lite more. And maybe they've both got worse, it's been a year after all.

                                          Here we have le matin bleu and 20 minutes, they're both much the same sort of thing. Bit of news, mostly about bread or dairy farmers, lots about what Miss Switzerland thinks & who's in Lost next season.

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                                            #22
                                            End of the line for the Lite

                                            I'm surprised that people can perceive differences between thelondonpaper and London Lite. To me they seem almost identical, the main difference being that one has the awful 'Em' cartoon, whereas the other has something even worse, called The Omnipresent, which often contains literally no joke whatsoever - it's just a drawing.

                                            But I couldn't honestly say which was which.

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                                              #23
                                              End of the line for the Lite

                                              That Em cartoon in The London Paper, what's the general consensus on that? At first I really liked it but now I hate it.

                                              The same applies to the City Boy and City Girl column. When they were unknowns I could deal with it, but since I've found out that City Boy is Geraint Anderson an absolute tosser to boot, I've gone off it.

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                                                #24
                                                End of the line for the Lite

                                                How will I find out what nightclub Lily Allen went to last night now?
                                                She'll be interview by Jonathan Agnew on Test Match Special.

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                                                  #25
                                                  End of the line for the Lite

                                                  Being a journalist myself, it feels like very poor form and bad kharma, not that one believes in such things of course, to rejoice in the closure of newspapers. I remember working at Melody Maker when Sounds went under. I can assure you that the decent and sensible journalists working for MM, whatever they might have thought of Sounds, responded with spontaneous sympathy to fellow journos trying, like us, to make a living and do something good and right, who had caught a bad break.

                                                  I feel the same about The Observer, a paper I absolutely hate. I don't want it to fold because I don't think its closure would represent some sort of literary evolution but would be symptomatic of something more malignant.

                                                  The demise of The London Paper is stretching this point to its thinnest - but even so . . .

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