Events | 2010.02.06
Hoax claims as London Weekly launch is met with derision
Bloggers brand freesheet \'worse than a student paper\' after first edition appears littered with spelling errors
When the London Paper and London Lite closed down, Londoners thought that perhaps the days of buses and tube trains being filled with discarded newspapers were over.
But then late last year news began to trickle out that a new free paper was to hit the streets . Plans for the London Weekly were shrouded in mystery and some doubted it would ever be published. Yesterday its first edition was available at about 20 tube stations around the capital and it was immediately splattered with opprobrium on blog posts and Twitter.
Styling itself "the lighthearted paper for lighthearted Londoners", the London Weekly was swiftly dubbed by others as "worse than a student newspaper" . Indeed, media students felt affronted: "To compare it to a student newspaper is insulting to talented young media students." Another blogger added: "Dreadful, dreadful. Design could have been done better by a group of four year olds with some dried up felt-tip pens."
The launch edition of the London Weekly was littered with mistakes. Cricketer Phil Tufnell\'s name was misspelled in the front-page masthead and the request for readers to email the publication asked: "Got any news story?"
The "Top 5 albums" section only included reviews of four records. The splash story was taken directly from a press release by Wasps rugby club.
Indeed, so ridiculed was the newspaper, that the internet soon filled with conspiracy theories that it was, in fact, a hoax or a PR stunt, with the favourite suggestion being that someone like Chris Morris, the TV presenter responsible for Brass Eye and The Day Today, was behind it.
The people behind the paper – Global Publishing Group – have remained surprisingly secretive given that a new title has been launched in the capital. There is no address or other contact details in the paper apart from email addresses for bylined journalists and a phone number for the advertising sales team.
The paper\'s website listed about 50 staff, but when contacted by the Guardian this week, several said they no longer had contact with the organisation .
But an address given to one advertiser also happened to be the headquarters of an organisation called The Invincible Group, which claims to have "a Magazine, an entertainment newspaper, Radio Station, TV production company, Clothing Label, Record Label, Events, PR, Celebrity management and marketing agency".
"Serial entrepeneur" Jordan Kensington is understood to be behind Invincible and is also involved in the Urban Music Awards.
For more information, please visit
http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2010/feb/06/london-weekly-launch
