London Lite
London Lite is the trading name of a British free newspaper, published by Associated Newspapers (part of Daily Mail and General Trust). It is available Monday to Friday afternoons and evenings from street distributors in Central London only.
History
On 14 December 2004 Associated Newspapers launched a freesheet edition of the Evening Standard, called Standard Lite, to help boost circulation. This had 48 pages, compared with about 80 in the main paper, which also had a supplement on most days.
It was announced in August 2006 that the free paper would now be called London Lite, in a move that has been widely seen as a spoiler to protect against the launch of News International's thelondonpaper on 4 September.
With the sale of the Evening Standard, but not London Lite, to Alexander Lebedev on 21 January 2009, the association between the Standard and the Lite was broken. London Lite, like its free sister morning newspaper, Metro, remains owned by Associated Newspapers, the same media group that owns the Daily Mail.
Content
London Lite, edited by Ted Young, is designed to be especially attractive to younger female readers, and features a wide range of lifestyle articles but less news and business news than the main paper. It was initially available only between 11.30am and 2.30pm from Evening Standard vendors and in the central area, but is now available in the evening from its own street distributors.
Celebrity gossip is given far more coverage than international news and the Lite also reports in detail the incidents of violent crime in the capital.
Criticisms
Alleged Environmental impact
Like the other free London dailies, the London Lite is generally discarded by its readers as soon as they have finished. The use of resources to print something with such a short lifespan has been criticised on environmental grounds. Westminster City Council estimated that free newspapers made up a quarter of all rubbish in the West End[1], much of which went un-recycled, although some stations have positioned recycling bins at entrances and exits specifically for this purpose.
References
External links
- Official Website
- London's free newspapers revealed This Is Local London
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