The drawn-out saga of negotiations between Russian banking billionaire Alexander Lebedev and Independent Media Group ended Thursday with the sale of the Independent and the Independent on Sunday, the Guardian reported. The sale comes in the wake of large losses suffered by the paper--almost 12 million pounds last year alone--and an uncertain future of the 24-year-old publication.

To rid itself of the unprofitable publication, Independent Media Group has agreed to pay Lebedev 9.25 million pounds over the next ten months to take care of a lingering print agreement with Trinity Mirror and other operating costs. Conversely, Lebedev paid a token one pound to IMG--the same amount he paid when he acquired London's Evening Standard last year.

And just as he did with the Evening Standard, Lebedev will change much within the Independent's operations. It is unlikely that the Independent will become a freesheet, as Lebedev has said that he doesn't wish to hurt other businesses with his revamp of the Indy. And, as of right now, there are no radical plans to revamp the Independent.co.uk website, which currently counts 9.5 million unique views, according to the Guardian.

But Lebedev has been hunting for a new editor, reportedly asking Rod Liddle, Jeremy Paxman, New Statesman editor John Kampfner and former BBC director general Greg Dyke to take the position, though none have yet signed up. It is expected that Lebedev will augment the editorial offerings and lower the price of the publication to the 60-75p range.

Why take on a floundering publication at such an uncertain time for news publishers? Lebedev has made a number of moves to support press freedom in the past, including the co-ownership of Russia's pro-democracy newspaper Novaya Gazeta with former President Mikhail Gorbachev and his revamp of the Evening Standard.

"I invest in institutions which contribute to democracy and transparency and, at the heart of that, are newspapers which report independently and campaign for the truth to be revealed," he said in a statement released by Maitland.

In keeping with this emphasis on quality reporting, the Maitland release also touted the creation of the Novaya Independent Media Foundation (NIMF), a non-profit international organization of newspapers that aims to fund investigative journalism across the globe.

It is still unclear whether such investigative journalism can exist in an unprofitable paper, but Lebedev's ownership of the Independent means that he's in for the hard slog through the development of new business models for printed media everywhere.

Sources: PaidContent, Press Gazette, The Guardian