Since its final print edition in March 2016, The Independent retained the brand but changed who it served, how it reached them, how it monetised their attention, what products it sold, what talent and capabilities it needed, and what costs it carried.

It has been profitable every year since then, with margins ranging from 4% to 16%. In 2024, the most recent year for which it reported full accounts, Independent Digital News and Media Ltd. had a turnover of £53.2 million and operating profit of £3.2 million.

“Our digital revenues today are greater than the print revenues of The Independent, The Independent on Sunday, and The i Paper combined in 2015-2016,” said CEO Christian Broughton. (The company has not yet reported its 2025 accounts publicly.)

Before the switch to digital-only, the newspaper had been losing money every year since 2010 when the Russian family of Lebedevs had bought the already struggling 24-years-old title from the Irish O’Reillys. 

Per the historic accounts, the Lebedevs absorbed £65 million in cumulative losses before closing the printed Independents and selling The i Paper. 

The business that closed

In 2015, the last full year before the switch, the legacy business was six times bigger than the digital one — £53.5 million in revenue vs. £8.2 million — but the latter already looked healthier. 

While print lost £4.1 million that year, digital made £1.3 million in operating profit. 

The old model relied on declining circulation and advertising to support a business burdened by high fixed costs tied to printing and distributing physical copies. 

Right before the print closure, The Independent was the smallest national daily newspaper in the U.K., with a daily circulation of 55,000 (for comparison, the bestselling Sun had 1.8 million).

The new model removed most of the physical costs and rebuilt around scalable digital products and technology. 

The company became dramatically smaller — in 2016, the combined revenue fell 73% to £16.9 million — but it also became immediately more viable and sustainable.

The restructuring was painful: The total employment shrunk in the first two years from 317 to 175 or by 45%.

The business that was born

It took another seven years to rebuild the business scale and get the headcount back to 332 (in 2024).

Based on the management reports, there was no single silver bullet but a relentless experimentation in diversifying markets and products.

1. The customer base widened from British domestic readers and advertisers to global digital audiences, direct and programmatic advertisers, e-commerce vendors, licensing partners, and others.

2. The new products for those customers included subscriptions and contributions, branded content, digital services, events, content syndication, and consulting.

3. The distribution channels shifted from U.K. newsstands to multiple Web sites, apps, newsletters, search, social, video and podcast platforms, including licensed online brands like BuzzFeed, HuffPost, or Tasty in the U.K. and Ireland. 

4. Editorially, the coverage broadened from broadsheet-like quality news into a wider mix of news, lifestyle, entertainment, and commerce advice.

5. Geographically, the coverage expanded beyond the U.K. and English language with editions in the U.S. and Asia, and in Arabic, Persian, Spanish, Turkish, and Urdu.

6. The customer relationship changed from largely anonymous copy buyers or online users to direct, data-rich relationships built through registration and subscription.

7. The tech stack let the same journalism, consumer data and intent be monetised across readers, advertisers, retailers, or licensing partners.

Strategic advantages and tensions

Today’s model of the digital-only Independent has very different economics than print: 

• Low marginal costs for serving customers in Miami or Riyad. 

• Benefits from economies of scale, scope, and proprietary data. 

• Multiple revenue streams which do not depend on the same variable or cycle.

In print, The Independent competed on differentiation — its unique editorial voice aimed at an upmarket British reader and commanded a price premium from both newsstand buyers and advertisers.

In digital, The Independent still competes editorially through differentiation, but it monetises that differentiation in models that rewards scale, mass appeal, and content reuse. 

In 2025, The Independent’s Web sites recorded 62 million visitors globally, 175 million pageviews, and 67 million video views every month. Two-thirds of visitors and over one-third of revenue came from outside of the U.K.

This strategic logic creates tensions

How to retain the brand equity that makes its journalism trusted and valued while operating a revenue model rewarding scale? Is that scale defensible at the time of fragmenting funnels and AI disruption?

The Independent’s answer is to double down on editorial innovation, first-party data, and Artificial Intelligence: 

• Talent-led video shows, podcasts, and newsletters, such as Adam Clery’s Football Channel or Well Enough podcast on health, engage audiences across platforms, demographics, and geographies.

• Data-driven targeting on the company’s Web sites and apps recovers some of the advertising premium once provided by an upmarket print readershipmand helps to identify potential subscribers and contributors.

• AI tools keep the operations lean but also more effective, e.g., AI-generated, human-verified news briefing Bulletin deepens engagement of time-poor audiences.

Chairman John Paton said: “The next decade will be defined by how media companies use technology to strengthen trust, deepen audience relationships, and build sustainable business models.”

A blueprint for other publishers? 

Digital transformation doesn’t end with digitisation of products and requires redesigning the whole business model. 

The Independent’s combination of a globally portable brand, a large and rich addressable market for English news (including the world’s richest media market of the U.S.), and an owner willing to absorb transitional losses are not easily replicable.

But the logic behind The Independent’s strategy is available to all: Identify what you actually own that is worth keeping. Eliminate the cost structure that is killing you. Diversify customers and follow their needs — even if it means a costly transition from text to video content. 

The Independent rebuilt its business around the digital core, leveraged global platforms and syndication, and now it benefits from scale. Others can buy scale, or share it, or rent, or simulate:

• For example, Belgian Mediahuis bought scale through mergers and acquisitions across Germany, Ireland, and the Netherlands, and then centralised product and technology functions (400, or 9% of the group’s employees). 

• Sweden’s Bonnier shared scale through its tech stack, alliances, and bundles with fellow publishers like Erna Media and Gota Media.

• Germany’s Madsack rented scale through partnerships with tech vendors, such as Arc XP and Google, and then reshared it with peers through its editorial network RND. 

• France’s Le Monde simulated scale by using AI to do more with the same resources, e.g., it launched an English edition with AI translation and human oversight but without setting up newsrooms in the U.K. or the U.S.

Greg’s Readers First newsletter is a public face of a revenue and media subscriptions initiative by INMA, outlined here. INMA members can subscribe here.

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