The former Daily Mail editor Geordie Greig has been appointed editor-in-chief of the Independent, as the news outlet faces tough financial challenges and deals with a round of redundancies.
Greig has been given the task of growing the Independent’s audience in the US after the company recently made about 30 staff redundant, including several of its UK political reporters.
A number of Independent staff, who believe the outlet should retain its left-leaning outlook, expressed surprise at the news that a former Daily Mail editor had been placed in charge. One individual described the staff reaction as “variously quaking/raging/mortified/unsurprised”.
Greig’s decision to join the Independent reunites him with Evgeny Lebedev, who continues to own a substantial stake in the news outlet. The pair first met in the late 2000s when Greig was editing the society magazine Tatler. The journalist helped to advise Lord Lebedev on the purchase of the Evening Standard, before himself being appointed editor of the London newspaper.
The remain-supporting Greig later became editor of the Mail on Sunday before moving across to the Daily Mail as the replacement for the Brexit-backing editor Paul Dacre. However, Greig’s stint in charge of the Mail came to an unceremonious end in 2021 when he was ousted amid public clashes with Dacre over the outlet’s direction.
Greig faces a tough challenge in his new job. When the Independent shut down its main print edition in 2016, it retained its website, which boomed thanks to social media sharing and an aggressive approach to getting breaking stories online fast. However, all news websites are struggling with the decline in traffic from sites such as Facebook as audiences drift elsewhere – while a tough advertising market means it is harder to convert clicks into money.
The Independent’s ownership structure has also attracted attention, after a 30% stake in the company was sold to a Saudi Arabian businessman. It later emerged in legal filings that he controlled his stake through an offshore company in the Cayman Islands, with the UK government stating in 2019 that it believed a bank with close links to the Saudi state was a part-owner.
A full regulatory investigation into the Independent’s new investor was blocked after the UK government missed deadlines to intervene. Since then, multiple foreign-language versions of the Independent have been launched by a Saudi publishing house, all aimed at an audience in the Middle East. There has also been substantial Saudi advertising on the Independent’s website.
The news organisation has insisted that Lebedev’s father, the Russian oligarch Alexander Lebedev, who was involved in the 2010 purchase of the now defunct print Independent and is currently under sanctions from the Canadian government, has no ongoing involvement in the website.
The Independent has not had a permanent editor since Christian Broughton stepped aside in 2020. John Paton, the chair of the Independent’s parent company, said Greig – who takes up the role with immediate effect – would be asked to “further build news teams around the world to extend our global reach, whilst also maintaining the values and integrity of the Independent as we expand”.
• This article was amended on 6 January 2022 to clarify that the sanctions relating to Alexander Lebedev have been imposed by the Canadian government.
