>>Kirsty Wark: When were you first aware of newspaper stories as a child?
>>Evgeny Lebedev: I suppose when I observed my grandfather reading Pravda.
Of course the famous Russian saying was that there was no -- pravde net izvetiy, v izvestiyah
net pravdy.
Pravda which meant truth and izvestiyah was news.
So no news in truth and no truth in news.
>>Kirsty Wark: And then, of course, you have in your family amassed this huge fortune,
so at that stage did you have any idea that you would ever want to be involved in journalism?
>>Evgeny Lebedev: I never knew I would be involved in journalism in the way I am involved
now, no.
Having acquired Novaya Gazeta in Russia, I spent some time in the newspaper, learned
about it, but never knew that I would be involved in journalism in this country.
>>Kirsty Wark: You wouldn't be involved in journalism if you were poor.
>>Evgeny Lebedev: That's an interesting question.
I never thought about that.
>>Kirsty Wark: And?
>>Evgeny Lebedev: And I may or may not have been.
Never say never.
>>Kirsty Wark: Because I'm thinking 75 million pounds is a lot of faith to put in your journalism.
You talk about Murdoch, but you are, in a sense, a new media mogul yourself.
>>Evgeny Lebedev: You could say that.
>>Kirsty Wark: So where do you go from here?
You talk about launching Independent Voices, but what about another paper?
What about a weekly paper?
What about another paper in Russia?
>>Evgeny Lebedev: Well, launching papers in Russia is a very difficult --
>>Kirsty Wark: Yeah.
>>Evgeny Lebedev: -- business because -- for many, many reasons.
You have a lot of restrictions, a lot of constrictions.
So we have actually had another newspaper some time ago called Moscow correspondent
which was sort of an anti-mayor newspaper.
There was a mayor of Moscow for many years who was very corrupt and you just were not
allowed to run a newspaper like that because none of the sellers in Moscow would sell the
newspapers.
So the newspaper had to close down quite quickly.
As regards to launching another newspaper here, as I said, never say never but it's
not something I am looking at at the moment, unless it's a new version of the Daily Sport.
>>Kirsty Wark: Well, there would be a big appetite for that.
You've got the Independent Voices.
How is that going to be moderated?
You talked about work with Amil Rajin who has been working with you on this.
It's going to be an open space.
How open?
>>Evgeny Lebedev: We are going to try to make it as open as possible.
It will be -- It's called Independent Voices so it's all about giving people a voice.
What I want to create is a new version of people power where people can express their
voice but also feel that they can have an influence on whether it's corporations, politicians.
I think Avaaz and change.com are great examples of that, but what's going to be our USP and
what is going to be different from those other Web sites is actually that there will be editorial
on Independent Voices, which would be done by either our writers, our journalists with
Evening Standard or Independent, The EYE, or outside writers.
And it will also be affiliated, of course, with the national newspaper.
>>Kirsty Wark: Let's break this down because you have got the Standard which you say is
now making a profit.
You have got The EYE which is 20 p, and you were telling me earlier that it is young people
and very elderly people who buy The EYE.
Sustainable journalism on the main Independent newspaper, let's just talk about reporting
from abroad.
For a lot of the mainstream news organizations it's very hard in the wake of how much money
was spent, for example, on Libya for sending to Syria and to keep going, there is not an
endless pit of money.
Where do you stand on the importance of sending your own journalists abroad?
This is where I am thinking about citizen journalism and new forms of journalism?
How many risks do you want to take with what you put in your newspaper or the old standards
of double sourcing?
How do you make sure your newspapers are strong and true.
>>Evgeny Lebedev: I think it's very important for us to make sure that what's written in
the Independent especially in the form of reporting is very truthful.
So we probably haven't been using enough citizen journalism and I would like to use it more
but the question is, of course, how do you verify it.
So we do have foreign correspondents and we have very good foreign correspondents.
I think the Independent is known for its foreign reporting.
People like Patrick Cockburn, Robert (saying names).
So it is finding a balance about having foreign correspondents and being able to use your
own foreign correspondents.
And we have great ones.
But at the same time, working out how the citizen journalism can be incorporated because
you talked about the earthquake in Japan, for example.
That is an obvious event that can be reported by citizen journalism because people there
with cameras can film it straight away.
Fortunately, events like that don't happen every day.
So on events of smaller scale which are not so visually -- so visually profound, it is
much more difficult because then it is not just a camera.
And when you have people writing, then it becomes -- it goes into a difficult and complicated
territory.
>>Kirsty Wark: But when personally you have a passion, because of what you were talking
about, the restrictions you faced growing up in Russia, do you see foreign correspondent
reporting as a priority for The Independent?
Would you pour more money into that rather than having the citizen journalism being the
major part of those pages?
>>Evgeny Lebedev: I think going forward, we just have to make sure we support the work
that The Independent is doing because there are foreign correspondents who are very well-known
and very respected but at the same time finding ways of how we can use citizen journalism
more and figuring out ways how it can be verified.
>>Kirsty Wark: So, moving on, I will just talk with the different models going ahead,
which you have decided on free for The Standard.
You decided on cheap for The EYE.
There's the Paywall model as well for online, and there is obviously not for profit.
I mean, how do you see the landscape evolving?
And do you think there will be the same number of newspapers in Britain in ten years as there
are now?
>>Evgeny Lebedev: Probably not.
I think the most important thing to do is what I talked about in the speech, about the
depressing mode of print journalism dying.
It is actually looking at print journalism in unconventional ways.
So what we did with The Standard, what we did with The EYE was taking a conventional
newspaper business model and looking at it in the way, which is inventive.
And The Standard, it was actually a revolutionary step to take, to take it free.
A lot of people said -- well, first they said, You are absolutely mad to buy it.
Then they said, You are absolutely mad to take it free.
But actually I think we've proven those people wrong because it's paying for itself now with
the advertising model and the quality is there.
So I think it's just making sure that the ones that will survive are the ones that will
review their business models and look how they can go into the future rather than just
letting it be and disappearing.
>>Kirsty Wark: Just in terms of traditionally, how can you keep funding The Independent?
What keeps funding The Independent?
That's the big money paper, isn't it?
>>Evgeny Lebedev: At the moment, it is the Lebedev money that's funding The Independent.
But it is not -- >>Kirsty Wark: Do you have a bottomless pit?
>>Evgeny Lebedev: No, absolutely not.
The idea is to try and think of ways of how The Independent will lose less money.
I'm not sure it will make a profit but at least losing much less money than it is losing
now.
>>Kirsty Wark: But it is interesting, because you've got the balance.
That's really why I was asking about making sure that your foreign reporting is gold standard.
That costs a lot of money.
The Lebedev money, keeping The Independent going, that's a very big ask, isn't it?
Do you have a lot of money?
[ Laughter ] >>Evgeny Lebedev: Well, I'm not sure about
that.
I'm not really going to go into talking about how much money.
But what I will say, the money is not a bottomless pit.
It is not something -- I don't think The Independent should be seen as a charity.
It shouldn't be seen as something that's just funded going forward endlessly.
I think it should be seen as a -- we're looking at it as a business model that we're trying
to at least reduce the cost now and reduce the losses, sorry -- not the cost, but the
losses.
And maybe there will be a future where the standard is making money and some of it is
paying for The Independent.
But taking that aside, the important thing is to make sure The Independent losses are
cut, and we are looking at various ways of doing it.
And launching The EYE was certainly one of them because having launched this newspaper
that now outsells the Guardian, it has completely changed our advertising model, which means
our advertising yields have grown vastly.
>>Kirsty Wark: Evgeny Lebedev, thank you very much indeed.
[ Applause ]