To my mind this can only be a good thing. No, they do not provide quality reporting, and I can’t say I enjoy reading them, but they get people reading the news and talking about it. Surely that is the role of newspapers?

I was therefore surprised by the scathing attack on them by Roy Greenslade. He said that thelondonpaper was only ever about Murdoch having his share of the market to stop the Daily Mail and General Trust which publishes London Lite, the Metro and the Evening Standard:

“Publishing thelondonpaper is simply a blunt instrument to wreck a rival company’s business. It is about destroying profit rather than making it.”

It seems fair enough that there is some healthy competition in the market and as the paper is not making a profit it would suggest that the public have made up their own minds about it (or at least the advertisers have) and that is what they should be allowed to do.

I do agree with Greenslade that it is a shame that the Evening Standard is suffering but the Dail Mail group is killing its own title off with the popularity of its London Lite paper.

If the recession combined with the growth of new media is as bad for newspapers as media commentators make out then the freesheets may become the staple of London news. Although I hope it will never come to that, at least people who would not otherwise read the news are being kept in touch with what goes on in the world.

However, I do agree with Greenslade that perhaps media organisations need to spend more time and energy preserving their quality titles rather than fighting over the circulation of freesheets.