Jemima Khan joins Independent as associate editor

Activist and human rights campaigner Jemima Khan is to join the Independent as an associate news editor.

Khan will be writing interviews as well as contributing comment and features pages of the Independent and cut-price sister title i. She will also take on some commissioning duties.

She joins the Independent after guest-editing April’s edition of the New Statesman, which focused on freedom of information and free speech.

Khan interviewed Nick Clegg for the edition, about life in the coalition government and his relationship with David Cameron.

Simon Kelner, editor-in-chief of the Independent and i, said: “Anyone who knows Jemima will know that she is a forceful character with strong views. And anyone who saw her issue of the Statesman will have seen that she has an editorial flair.”

Khan said that she was “thrilled with the opportunity”.

“I am a huge fan of both papers and am very excited to be able to work with a talented team of writers and editors,” she added.

Khan appeared in an advert for i earlier this year alongside comedian Dom Joly. The Advertising Standards Agency ruled in May that the advert was misleading in its claim that i contained “no celeb gossip nonsense”.

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MediaGuardian: Sales of Independent’s i continue to fall

The Guardian reported this morning that sales of the Independent’s new daily compact i are understood to have “dropped off to close to an average daily sale of 70,000″.

Initial sales were thought to be at about 180,000 the report claims, based on information from “several sources”.

In the third week after launch, the week commencing 8 November, average daily sales ranged from about 75,000 to 85,000; by the end of last week average daily sales appeared to be hovering close to 70,000 to 73,000, according to industry sources.

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Simon Kelner remembers his days on the Neath Guardian in its last issue

As reported last week, the weekly Neath Guardian owned by Trinity Mirror is to close, and in its last issue, Simon Kelner, editor-in chief of the Independent and the Independent on Sunday reflects on his days at the newspaper.

“It seems inconceivable that a town whose people thrive on knowing what’s going on, who make it their business to know everyone else’s business, will have no town crier.

“Hard though it may be to believe in this multi-media age, but the Guardian once occupied a central role in the life of the town, and sold (yes, sold) upwards of 10,000 copies a week.”

Roy Greenslade reproduces the article on his Guardian blog…

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Peter Kirwan on newspaper editors and where they live

An apt subject, given newspaper editors’ current preoccupation with where and how our MPs are living in London. Press Gazette’s Peter Kirwan notes that he is increasingly convinced that a national newspaper editor has moved into his street, in an ‘untidy’ corner of the city.

Kirwan takes a look at other journalists’ choice of location:

“When he edited the Sunday Times, Andrew Neil lived in snooty Onslow Gardens off the Fulham Road. Today, Simon Kelner of the Independent scrapes by in Belgravia. As everyone knows, Polly Toynbee occupies a small castle next to Clapham Common (when she’s not living in Italy).

“Not so The Editor.”

‘Most of the editorial executives who run the nationals could do with a blast of Real Life,’ Kirwan comments; he reckons his street might give ‘The Editor’ just that.

Full story at this link…

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Media Week: Independent chief Simon Kelner says there are no plans to go online-only

Simon Kelner, managing director and editor-in-chief of the UK’s The Independent newspaper, rubbishes rumours that it might go online-only. Full story…

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FT: Roger Alton named editor of The Independent

Roger Alton, former editor of The Observer, has been appointed editor of The Independent.

Simon Kelner, who has edited the title for the last 10 years, has been promoted to managing director and editor-in-chief of the daily and Sunday titles.

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