The sad decline of the Evening Standard

It’s always a sad day for journalists when a newspaper goes to the great printing room in the sky. But for all Londoners, the death of the capital’s last surviving evening paper is particularly poignant.

The Evening Standard has announced that it is to cease publication as a daily paper – remaining alive only as a weekly edition. The news is not entirely unexpected: for years the paper has been a shadow of its former self, and was no longer an essential read for home-going commuters.

Owned since 2009 by Russian born Alexander Lebedev and his son Evgeny, who has a 63 per cent majority stake, the other 24 per cent is owned by the Daily Mail group, with a 5 per cent minority stake owned by journalist Geordie Greig and 7 per cent by Justin Byam Shaw. Announcing the end of the daily edition, the owners blamed unsustainable rising costs and declining circulation caused by the number of people working from home after the Covid pandemic.