The Independent has traditionally been a left-wing newspaper in competition with The Guardian. The main demographic of the newspaper is 25 - 34 year olds, the majority of its readers are men and from the ABC1 social grade bracket. The ‘rate card’ for The Independent shows that the newspaper is most popular in the London region. (Data - NRS July 2010 - June 2011 and NMA rate card). From this information I am assuming that the main audience of the newspaper is young professionals who probably work in the area of London known as ‘the city’.
The readers are middle class and are attractive to advertisers, for example, adverts in The Independent newspapers from 1st, 3rd and 10th November 2011 have included; a Jaguar car, Green and Black’s chocolate and Ernest Jones jewellery. All 3 of these adverts could be seen to be aimed at people with more money than the average person as they are all for (in relative terms) expensive items. However, Ernest Jones is considered to be ‘middle of the road’ when it comes to price but Jaguar is a manufacturer that specialises in luxury cars. The highest price to advertise in The Independent is £24,000, this is low in comparison to other newspapers, however The Independent has quite a low circulation. (Data – The Independent).
The newspaper also features a section called ‘World’, this section covers world news is quite large and the type of person that would buy the newspaper may have a keen interest in world news, therefore he or she may buy the newspaper just to read the ‘World’ section.
The Independent seems to take an anti-war stance; this is this same view that the Liberal Democrat party have generally taken. Liberal Democrats is probably the party that The Independent supports. An example of the anti-war view has been apparent recently with the newspaper not displaying an image of a poppy on the front in the week leading up to Armistice Day. However, another reason for the newspaper not displaying a poppy on the front could be that the newspaper assumes that the readers are intelligent enough to be able to ‘remember’ without the aid of an image of a poppy.
Even though it seems as if The Independent has a left-wing view and supports the Liberal Democrats, (e.g. during the 2010 election, The Independent printed this: “there is a strong case for progressively minded voters to lend their support to the Liberal Democrats”.) (Quote - Wikipedia) the Independent doesn’t seem to lean its news articles in the direction of liberalism very much, instead it presents the reader with a ‘wishy washy’ view. You could also say that this extends to the type of stories it doesn’t print e.g. murders. Other examples include stories from The Independent from 15th November; it had stories that included phone hacking, the EU and banker’s pay. These are interesting topics but there is nothing particularly hard-hitting in the newspaper.
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