Johnston Press completes purchase of i newspaper

Regional newspaper publisher Johnston Press said it had completed its takeover of the i newspaper from Independent Print Ltd.

The newspaper, launched as a digest of material from the Independent five years ago, was purchased for £24m.

The Independent was shut down in March by owner Evgeny Lebedev with the loss of more than 100 jobs and is now operating as an online service with severely reduced staffing.

A handful of i staff were transferred to Johnston, which itself is looking to make up to 100 journalists redundant across its titles to cut it's large debt.

Johnston in March reported an 8.8% fall in full year revenues to £245.1m. Ratings agency Standard & Poors downgraded the company to CCC+ from B, saying the group would struggle to grow sales from digital operations fast enough to deal with the slump in print circulation.