Life without print. Life without what is now ‘The i paper’. Both have finally come good for privately-owned Independent Media, which this week reported it had broken the GBP£50 million (A$101.78 million) revenue barrier.
But it’s 2015 – the last full year in which The Independent, The Independent on Sunday and The i Paper were all printed – that is being used as a benchmark. Only The i Paper – bought by Johnston Press and now owned by Daily Mail publisher DMG Media – still survives in print, although Independent Media says the digital-only Independent is now the UK’s largest commercial digital news website and has grown its US audience by 21 per cent, making it the fifth-biggest newspaper title in the US.
A factor may be the appointment of Christian Broughton, who completed his first full year as chief executive. Apart from “significant growth” in the core business, the company took control of BuzzFeed, HuffPost, Tasty and Seasoned in the UK and Ireland in a multi-year licensing deal, delivering “immediate growth and profit”.
Revenue in the 2024 financial (and calendar) year increased 15 per cent to GBP53.2 million, the eighth consecutive year of growth and profit for The Independent since going fully digital.
Notably, the company says its revenue matched the income of both i and the Independent’s weekday and Sunday editions, in 2015, their last full year of print.
Independent Digital News Media chairman John Paton says the “robust” financial performance makes The Independent “a successful outlier in an otherwise challenging market for news brands”.
Pictured: The Independent and i in 2016