When I first moved to London in 2001, I always used to buy the Evening Standard to read on the train home from work. Plenty of news had happened off-radar during the day, and an evening paper was a useful way to catch up before I got home. There was usually plenty to read, especially in the Hot Tickets pullout every Thursday, and I didn't feel like I was wasting my money.
And then I gave up buying the Evening Standard to read on the train home. The newspaper seemed increasingly aimed at Putney women, not East End blokes, so I found the majority of its content either disagreeable or irrelevant. Chief in this respect was Friday's ghastly ES glossy - umpteen pages of aspirational Belgravia tosh which I couldn't throw in the bin quickly enough. I abandoned ship and moved on.
I am therefore target audience for the Evening Standard's latest "Sorry" campaign, part of a rebranding exercise under new editor Geordie Greig. He wants to turn the paper around from doom-mongering partisan has-been to optimistic sparky cheerleader, in a last-ditch attempt to arrest years of declining circulation. A Monday giveaway spearheaded his fresh approach.
So, could yesterday's freerelaunch issue change my mind and bring me back into the ES fold? Not easy, given that it took me six attempts to find an orange-shirted distributor who hadn't already given away their entire allocation. But I finally managed to find an ungrabbed copy outside a backstreet newsagent, and settled down on the tube home to give the new design a thorough perusal.
New masthead - bold and eye-catching. New orange colour - weak and pasty. Iconic Eros statue - retired. And what of the main headline? "CITY TYCOON: MY SECRET LOVE LIFE" Sigh, some tedious four-page story about a philandering City banker battling through an £11m divorce settlement. Precisely the sort of irrelevant toff-level "human interest" story which switched me off from the paper in the first place. Moving on...
There was a second story on the front page - a single column about the PM's latest response to the MPs expenses scandal. I'd read this story on the relaunched Standard website at lunchtime, so I knew Gordon's speech had gone down well with nurses' leaders. Except, according to my copy, this speech was something Gordon was still "due to say". My homebound copy of the Evening Standard had been published before noon, and events had since moved on. Lunchtime lift accident at Tower Bridge - nowhere to be seen. Prince William opening the Whitechapel Gallery - invisible. With the newspaper's mid-afternoon edition recently cancelled, I was unimpressed by my out-of-date reading material.
Inside, a refreshing welcome from the Standard's new editor. No sign of the word "sorry", though, which appears to be restricted only to the advertising campaign. And opposite, to underline the paper's new upbeat stance, a full page feature on inspirational pupils in the "poor borough" of Dagenham. I skimmed over it to be honest, because good news rarely sells, but it was encouraging to observe the paper looking optimistically eastward for once.
Not so hot on pages 6 and 7, however. A full page advert for Fendi handbags opposite articles on Mayfair dining, Harvey Nicks and tax-whingeing financiers. Don't care, not listening. The Comment spread managed to be slightly more socially balanced, squeezing reverence for EastEnders inbetween articles on Theatreland and Oxbridge. But the long-established "Londoner's Diary" remained focused on society luvvies one might invite to one's dinner party, and definitely not on Amy, Lily and the usual tabloid fodder.
I read some interesting Olympic news I'd not seen anywhere else (ooh, stadium-sidefireworks to see out 2011) (ooh, High Street 2012 has been rescued by £2m of funding), and perused the critic's reviews of various arty events I shall never attend. But on the whole I flicked past more pages than I read (Tom Wolfe's story about rich fliers at American private airports, no) (seven pages of business news, maybe for you, not for me). Even in-depth reaction to the weekend's sporting disasters was feeling fairly stale by Monday teatime.
On my way home I also picked up a londonpaper and a London Lite, although I didn't manage to grab a free KitKat with the former. Both free papers felt weedy in comparison to the Standard, and were clearly aimed at a rather lower reading age or attention span. I was particularly aware that almost all of the news stories in the London Lite were slimmed down recycled versions of longer articles I'd just read in the Standard, and even less interesting as a result. Into the recycling with them both, and fast.
So I gave the new London Evening Standard a try but, sorry, it's still not for me. I'll happily click through its website over lunch to read the latest news about the capital I love, but I don't see the point in forking out good money to read exactly the same stuff on the way home. The Standard may have changed, but dissemination of news is changing even faster. Less carping and more uplift won't be nearly enough, I'm afraid, to wrest a daily 50p from my pocket.
New masthead - bold and eye-catching. New orange colour - weak and pasty. Iconic Eros statue - retired. And what of the main headline? "CITY TYCOON: MY SECRET LOVE LIFE" Sigh, some tedious four-page story about a philandering City banker battling through an £11m divorce settlement. Precisely the sort of irrelevant toff-level "human interest" story which switched me off from the paper in the first place. Moving on...
