> There is very little integrity in a free paper, it's basically a propaganda leaflet handed out by large organizations to influence your behaviour, with a few

> There is very little integrity in a free paper, it's basically a propaganda leaflet handed out by large organizations to influence your behaviour, with a few crosswords in the back. Bit of an over-simplification, I think. The Evening Standard was paid-for until a few years ago. It's now ad-funded. That doesn't _necessarily_ mean that the advertisers influence the editorial line: there are plenty of publications that get the majority of their income from advertising yet remain editorially independent (I edited one for six years). The ES has historically been very editorially independent (generally not with an editorial line I like tbh, but that's by the by) and yet remained profitable. Now it's crossing the line towards ad-controlled. That's their decision, but I don't believe it was inevitable. (That said, I think I'd prefer puff pieces about Google to the relentless crap about some guy called Nicky Haslam that the ES has historically run...)