The Press - At the sharp end of London's free-for-all

Older Independent readers will have had a knowing chuckle at reports of the dirty tricks campaign being waged against thelondonpaper (which I edit) over the past month. Last week thelondonpaper won the Grand Prix for Innovation at the 2007 Newspaper Awards (based largely on our success in attracting 18-35 year old readers back to reading newspapers). Meanwhile, Associated Newspapers was distributing selective footage of three rogue (now ex-) distributors dumping some of our copies. This, and the "knocking ads" that followed, will be particularly familiar to anyone who worked on Robert Maxwell's short-lived London Daily News or the London Evening Standard of the 80s.

The LDN back then was up against the tactics of one of the British newspaper industry's wiliest old foxes, the indefatigable Bert Hardy. Hardy, a former News International executive, was the managing director of the Evening Standard in 1987 when Maxwell, fuelled by egotistical ambition and post-Wapping euphoria, dared to challenge its London monopoly. Just five months after its high-profile launch, the LDN closed amid allegations of vendor intimidation, dumped copies, and ABC irregularities, and in the face of a short-term spoiler product.

Fast forward to the period immediately before thelondonpaper's launch last September. During this time Associated dumped one spoiler, Standard Lite (after 20 months), and hastily cobbled together another, LondonLite.

When the LDN launched in 1987, the Standard's monopoly had been in place since 1980, when Associated bought and closed the more downmarket Evening News. Maxwell's plan for an evening title had suffered delays when he, whimsically, announced a 24-hour multi-edition product - to the horror of his surprised editor, Magnus Linklater, now of The Times. This dramatically increased the LDN cost-base, creating a logistical nightmare for the untested distributors. Compounding this, there were soon allegations, never wholly substantiated, of vendor harassment and the sabotage of distributor vans, amid claims of dumped copies and an ABC (circulation figures) spat. And Maxwell's hubris had a decisive role. Associated's killer tactic was to relaunch the old Evening News as the London Evening News against the London Daily News's evening edition. A rattled Maxwell cut the LDN's cover price to battle the LEN. Confused? So was the public.

Last summer, after a year's planning, we took our bright new thelondonpaper dummy to advertising agencies. The purple masthead, 48 pages of full colour, urban London focus, snappy short stories, bold use of pictures, novel sections like the daily londonlove page and the londoneye gossip spread, interaction with the readers and the thelondonpaper.com website all met with a universally positive reaction, as did the advertisement site on the back page.

It all still does. This is despite the axeing of Standard Lite, and the introduction of a new Associated spoiler. LondonLite had a maroon masthead, 48 pages of full colour, a gossip spread called londoneye, and introduced daily sections like... londonlove. It also had an ad site on its back page. thelondonpaper rechristened its gossip pages thebuzz, and the spoiler reacted by introducing buzzstops.

More curious is Associated's apparent lack of belief in the free sector despite the success of its free morning title Metro. Another knocking-ad campaign from Derry Street depicted commuters letting free newspapers fall to the ground. Strangely, they have declined to work together with us on joint green initiatives. Meanwhile the number of bulk copies of the Standard itself continues to grow, and thousands of copies of the Home and Property section lie in undistributed piles beside Standard vendors.

Associated's attack dog, the Metro and Lite managing director Steve Auckland, attacks us for increasing thelondonpaper's circulation before announcing a plan to increase Metro's London circulation by 200,000. Despite the Standard's circulation being 313,181 last August, Associated's contribution to the litter debate was to start distributing 400,000 copies of a paper they don't believe in long-term, in the hope we will go away. (When Maxwell's LDN was axed in July 1987, Associated scrapped the LEN just three months later.)

NI is not Robert Maxwell. thelondonpaper, NI's first newspaper launched from scratch, was born not of hubris, but because of the clear gap in the market that young urban London's rejection of the Standard presents. We are fully aware that we are in a fight with the former monopoly that is Associated's entire London portfolio. Every advertiser-penny spent with us used to be spent with that monopoly. And, if we know that the Standard is making a far greater loss than the £5m it used to, and that the Lite was launched into huge loss, then so do the competition watchdogs.

Associated will know that, when the LDN closed, the Standard's circulation was still 500,000. Its editor, Veronica Wadley insisted in September that thelondonpaper's launch had not caused the Standard to lose "a single copy", haughtily re-christening her title "London's Quality Newspaper", but happily redesigning its Londoner's Diary to be more like us (as has Metro with Guilty Pleasures). In fact its young ABC1 readers are deserting in droves. The Standard's headline March ABC figure was 266,575 (18 per cent down year-on-year) but the true story is far worse. Strip out the 62,506 bulks and its full-rate sale is 29 per cent down year-on-year at 203,699. Bulks have gone from 11 per cent of the total in March 2006 to 23.45 per cent in 2007. Industry wisdom is that advertisers will only accept 10 per cent.

Get on any tube or bus in the evening, look in any pub, bar or coffee shop: young Londoners everywhere are happily reading again; enjoying a paper that reflects the thriving, diverse capital we live in. All the arrogance, snobbery and dirty tricks that can be mustered against thelondonpaper can't and won't change that.

Stefano Hatfield is the editor of thelondonpaper

The gloves come off

For the past eight months the purple-and-mauve-clad armies that represent the two London free evening newspapers have managed to co-exist, side-by-side though resentful.

Now the gloves have come off and the two mighty news organisations behind the rival publications, Associated Newspapers and News International, are setting about each other. The hiring by Associated of the former Scotland Yard detective Phillip Swinburne and his secret filming of distributors of the News International title thelondonpaper has put both media groups on a war footing. Swinburne spotted NI vendors - who were supposedly "geomapped" to key locations, and expertly briefed by Wapping to hand their papers to young, affluent Londoners - carefully distributing piles of unwanted copies into public recycling bins.

Associated, the publishers of the rival LondonLite, revelled in the findings, putting Swinburne's film on YouTube and taking ads in the trade press claiming that thelondonpaper was a product "they can't even give away". Steve Auckland, the managing director responsible for LondonLite, claimed that the film showed that NI was "a big company not in touch with its operators".

The Audit Bureau of Circulations announced that it would review the auditing for free newspapers, having previously accepted circulation figures of 502,158 for thelondonpaper and 400,212 for LondonLite.

Alan Brydon, the head of press communication at Media Planning Group, says that advertisers should be aware that these figures represent copies given to distributors, not the number of papers actually handed to consumers. He says that the free-newspaper market is vulnerable because the papers are not seen as an indispensable part of any advertising campaign: "If you are targeting captains of industry, you cannot really not use the Financial Times. But with thelondonpaper and LondonLite there aren't any clients for whom they are so important that they can't be ignored. That's their problem."

Ian Burrell