inews.co.uk — The i Paper Online

London, England, UK · Published by DMG Media (Daily Mail and General Trust) · Harmsworth Media division

Overview

inews.co.uk is the digital publication of The i Paper — a British national daily newspaper that occupies a distinctive position in the UK press landscape as a "quality" newspaper in compact tabloid format, aimed at readers who want comprehensive, balanced coverage without the ideological commitment of the broadsheet left or right. The website accompanies a print edition published Monday to Saturday, priced at 90p on weekdays and £1.60 at weekends as of late 2024. The i Paper is edited by Oliver Duff, who has held the editor's role since 2014 and has been central to the publication's identity and its sustained reputation for political impartiality and concise clarity. The publication's masthead, adopted at its December 2024 renaming, captures its positioning directly: "Impartial news and intelligent debate." The redesigned inews.co.uk won Website of the Year at the 2025 Press Awards. The i Paper is now published by DMG Media, the media arm of the Daily Mail and General Trust, within the Harmsworth Media division — an ownership arrangement that has attracted some commentary given the ideological distance between The i's centrist-impartial positioning and its parent company's Mail titles, though both DMG and successive editors have maintained that editorial independence is preserved in practice.

History and Founding

The i newspaper was launched on 26 October 2010 by Independent Print Limited, the publisher of The Independent and The Independent on Sunday, then owned by Russian-British businessman Evgeny Lebedev. It was created by Simon Kelner, then editor of The Independent, as a more affordable and compact companion paper — initially priced at 20p — aimed at "readers and lapsed readers" of quality newspapers who wanted quality coverage without the full commitment of time or money that broadsheet reading required. A Saturday edition followed from May 2011, priced at 30p. The paper grew steadily: by March 2013 it had an average daily circulation of 302,757 — significantly exceeding that of its sister paper The Independent.

In February 2016, it was announced that Johnston Press — the Edinburgh-based regional publisher that owned The Scotsman, the Yorkshire Post, and around 200 other UK titles — had agreed to acquire the i from ESI Media (Lebedev's holding company) for approximately £24 million, as part of the restructuring that saw The Independent shift to a digital-only model. Johnston Press completed the acquisition in April 2016, retaining the i's editorial team under Oliver Duff, who had succeeded Kelner as editor in 2014. Simultaneously, Johnston Press launched inews.co.uk as the i's digital home, with digital editor Felicity Morse leading the new website with, as Johnston Press described it, an "editorial first ethos." The website initially promised "a concise and quality round-up of the key need-to-know stories across Britain," categorizing content as Essentials, Explainers, and Distractions. The launch coincided with a period of rapid digital growth: by November 2018, Comscore measured inews.co.uk at 5.2 million unique monthly visitors — a 457% increase from the 2 million it had been attracting at the start of that year — surpassing the online reach of The Times and the Huffington Post UK.

Johnston Press's broader financial situation, however, had become untenable. The company had accumulated debts of £220 million — the consequence of acquisition-led expansion during the pre-digital era — and despite the i's monthly profitability (reportedly around £1 million per month by December 2017) and its 20% market share of the quality weekday newspaper market, the parent company could not refinance. On 16 November 2018, Johnston Press filed for administration. Its assets, including the i and inews.co.uk, were immediately transferred to JPIMedia, a special purpose vehicle set up by Johnston Press's creditors — CarVal, Fidelity, Benefit Street Partners, and GoldenTree Asset Management — in a pre-packaged deal that reduced the debt to £85 million and injected £35 million. The transaction was criticized by Johnston Press's largest shareholder as a "blatant pre-planned corporate theft by bondholders."

JPIMedia's ownership of the i proved brief. On 29 November 2019, just over a year after the administration, JPIMedia sold the i newspaper and inews.co.uk to the Daily Mail and General Trust (DMGT) for £49.6 million. DMGT Chairman Lord Rothermere, the fourth Viscount Rothermere and owner of the Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday, committed to preserving the i's editorial independence and its "distinctive, high quality and politically independent editorial style." DMGT CEO Paul Zwillenberg said the i had "a different editorial style and tone to the Mail" and that the audience had "a different demographic," while acknowledging plans for cost synergies in printing, production, and advertising sales infrastructure. The Competition and Markets Authority served an initial enforcement order requiring the i to be run separately pending regulatory investigation, which was subsequently cleared. In December 2021, DMGT moved the i and New Scientist into a new internal division called Harmsworth Media.

Renaming and Digital Expansion

In December 2024, the newspaper was formally renamed The i Paper — reflecting how the publication was referred to conversationally and in broadcast media, where simply "i" created ambiguity. A new masthead — "Impartial news and intelligent debate" — was adopted simultaneously. Editor Oliver Duff explained the rebrand as intended "to reflect how we are talked about in conversation, in newsagents and on television." Alongside the renaming, inews.co.uk underwent a significant redesign that earned it the Website of the Year award at the 2025 Press Awards — a recognition that the digital edition, not merely the print paper, had become the primary vehicle through which The i Paper's journalism reaches its audience. The cover price rose to £1.10 on weekdays on 29 September 2025. Average daily print circulation had fallen to approximately 126,308 by 2024, reflecting the secular decline of UK print newspaper sales, though the website's audience has grown substantially.

Editorial Character and Positioning

The i Paper occupies a specific and somewhat unusual position in British newspaper ecology. It is classified as a "quality" newspaper — alongside The Times, The Daily Telegraph, The Guardian, The Independent, and the Financial Times — but published in the compact tabloid format of the mid-market papers. Its founding editorial proposition was brevity and accessibility: deliver quality journalism in a form that a reader with limited time could consume completely. That proposition has evolved but the core identity has remained stable through three ownership changes. The publication is widely described as politically neutral or centre: a 2018 UK poll found it the second-most trusted news brand in the country after The Guardian, and in March 2019 it overtook The Guardian as the most trusted digital news brand online. In 2020 the two papers tied as the most trusted national newsbrands in print.

The most notable test of The i's editorial independence under DMGT ownership came from the association with its parent company's flagship title: the Daily Mail. The i's editorial approach — skeptical of government regardless of party, focused on clear explanation over opinion, aimed at an educated urban readership with liberal social views — sits at a significant cultural and political distance from the Mail's populist right-leaning tabloid identity. Both DMGT and editor Oliver Duff have consistently maintained that the titles are operated independently; the Competition and Markets Authority's 2019 inquiry found no formal grounds for concern. Coverage of stories where the Mail and the i have taken different positions — including Brexit, immigration, and social policy — has generally borne this out, though media observers continue to monitor the relationship.

The i has broken significant stories under its own journalism rather than relying entirely on wire services and aggregation. Among the most discussed was a March 2021 investigation revealing that Pontins holiday parks had maintained an internal document listing common Irish surnames as a blacklist of "undesirable guests" — a story that generated immediate public controversy and official investigations. The publication has also consistently led with explainer-led coverage of complex policy issues, science, and international affairs, reflecting the original vision of a newspaper for readers who want to understand what is happening rather than simply be told what to think about it.

Access and Usage

inews.co.uk is freely accessible for most content, with a subscription model offering enhanced access, the ability to read the full print edition digitally, and an ad-free experience. Print editions are available at newsagents across the United Kingdom Monday to Saturday. Subscription options — available for six or twelve months, on weekday-only or including Saturday — are listed at inews.co.uk/subscribe. A discounted student subscription is available for one academic year. Editorial contact and general enquiries can be directed through inews.co.uk/contact-us. The publication is available on iOS and Android applications and through all major news aggregation platforms.

The i Paper / inews.co.uk
Published by DMG Media (Daily Mail and General Trust)
Harmsworth Media division
London, England, UK

Editor: Oliver Duff

Deputy Editor: Andy Webster

Ownership history: Independent Print / ESI Media (2010–2016) → Johnston Press (2016–2018) → JPIMedia (2018–2019) → DMG Media / DMGT (2019–present)

Website: inews.co.uk  |  Subscribe: inews.co.uk/subscribe