The Independent‘s cut-price “i” newspaper may not have a website or a mobile app of its own, but it has consented to provide digital news through a ghastly marketing mash-up with Heineken…

Independent News & Media (INM), the Irish-based company that once owned The Independent and seemed less than enamoured with the interweb, is certainly going digital now.

At just £0.20, the new Independent off-shoot “i” is certainly one of the cheapest (and freshest papers out there - clearly a cut above the celeb-led distractions inside full freesheets. But is even £0.20 the right price?

Independent.co.uk enjoyed the biggest month-on-month rise in average daily browsers among national newspaper websites in September, while guardian.co.uk topped 2 million on the same metric for the first time. However, Mail Online remained the UK’s most visited newspaper site in September, in both daily average browsers and monthly users, for…

Alexander Lebedev’s Independent is to launch a new compact weekday newspaper, called i, targeting groups including “lapsed readers of quality papers” and those wanting a “comprehensive digest of news”.

By Josh Halliday: The former digital media publisher of Times Newspapers, Zach Leonard, has been appointed as the new managing director of digital for the Independent and the London Evening Standard.

The Independent’s digital MD Bill Swanson is leaving the publisher to join “a boutique investment house specializing (sic) in the digital media space”, Swanson’s own Independent.co.uk reports. Swanson has headed the Indy’s online ops for five years, following a four-year tenure as News International commercial manager.

After buying The Independent from INM for £1 in March, speculation has been that Alexander Lebedev might repeat his London Evening Standard strategy and take The Indy free. But, in their first, separate interviews since buying The Indy, father Alexander and son Evgeny perhaps betray a hint of paternal contradiction…

The UK’s tenth-placed national newspaper The Independent has been sold to Russian billionaire Alexander Lebedev, as expected, for £1. Now what will he do with it… ? Specifically, will Lebedev scrap The Indy’s cover price, as he did after buying the London Evening Standard? Analysts seem to like the idea……

Independent News & Media has finally confirmed it will sell its flagship The Independent, Independent On Sunday and Independent.co.uk to Alexander Lebedev - but don’t expect any significant online changes just yet. If Lebedev’s London Evening Standard acquisition is anything to go by, then, far from taking the Indy online-only…

By Mark Sweney: Independent News & Media has reported a pre-tax loss of €31m (£27.7m) in 2009, and said that a deal to offload the loss-making independent newspaper titles to Alexander Lebedev is imminent. INM, which described its performance as “comparatively resilient performance in extremely poor advertising markets”, saw pre-tax…

—GMTV: Clive Crouch is leaving his position as chief operating officer of the broadcaster. The news comes as GMTV’s owner, ITV (LSE: ITV), this week reported a profit of £25 million for 2009 after a loss of £2.7 billion in 2008. (Via C21.net.) —Pearson: Terry Burns, the new chairman of…

This is turning out to be like waiting for the Christmas turkey: A deal between Alexander Lebedev and Independent News & Media is cooking—we can definitely smell it—but it’s not done yet. Today’s Times reports that that the Russian billionaire has now bought the Independent and Independent on Sunday papers,…

A little public glimpse today of the ongoing negotiations between Independent News & Media and Alexander Lebedev: the billionaire Russian is getting an extension on his exclusive negotiations to buy the Independent and Independent On Sunday newspapers, “to facilitate bringing these discussions to a successful conclusion”, INM told markets. Talks…

Truphone, a UK-based VoIP provider, will offer a competitively priced SIM-only mobile service for voice, texting and data—effectively becoming a virtual network operator. The company has signed deals with Vodafone (NYSE: VOD) in the UK and an unnamed U.S. operator. So far, Truphone’s business has been to offer a WiFi-based…

—PRS For Music: The royalty collector, which last year nearly halved its online streaming rate, has picked ex-Sony (NYSE: SNE) mobile SVP Robert Ashcroft to replace Steve Porter as CEO. Porter quit in July. PRS did deals with YouTube, Spotify, MySpace and Sky over the last year. —TalkTalk: John Allwood,…

By Mark Sweney: The Metro Herald, the daily Dublin newspaper created through the merger of Herald AM and Metro Ireland, launches today as a morning freesheet. The title is jointly owned by Associated Newspapers, the Daily Mail (LSE: DMGT) & General Trust subsidiary, the Irish Times and Independent News &…

Update: INM says in a statement to the stock market that it’s “entered into an exclusive - but non-binding” agreement with Alexander Lebedev to discuss the “future ownership” of the Indy titles. A deadline of February 15 has been set for any deal to be done—the statement is keen to…

Independent News & Media is continuing its asset fire sale this week with the announcement of a €18.3 million (£16.5 million) sale of its 49 percent stake in German price comparison site Verivox to Oakley Capital Private Equity. The deal includes a €2.3 million (£2 million) loan repayment by Verivox…