The Independent has launched a new site called Independent Voices to focus on commentary and opinion content, combined with input from readers. “Its mission is captured in three words: Comment, Campaigns, Community,” said the platform’s editor Amol Rajan and editor-in-chief Evgeny Lebedev in an announcement on the site.

It will have its own editorial line and be independent of the Independent newspaper, Rajan said in another post. “What I want us to achieve is a marriage of editorial brilliance, in the form of strong and clear argument, with digital power, in the form of viral campaigns – all of it in alliance with a community of ultra-engaged users.”

The Independent print product’s Opinion pages will, however, be renamed Independent Voices. The paper has a long history of focusing on comment and opinion, since former editor Simon Kelner's editorial strategy that was dubbed the 'viewspaper' concept back in 2003.

The London Evening Standard and The Independent have announced a merger that will crate joint business and sports desks shared between the two publications. Independent staff will head the sports desk up while London Evening Standard writers will man the business desk.

The merger is an effort to economise in response to the increasingly difficult financial situation faced by the majority of print newspapers - including these two titles, that are published by Independent Print Ltd. and owned by the Lebedev family.

The Evening Standard explained the motivation for the move in a press statement:

"The Evening Standard and the Independent are both exploring ways to see how integration between them in a limited way can benefit all the papers owned by the Lebedevs. This is a constructive and useful way to maintain our high quality journalism and reduce costs in an economic climate which has hurt the whole newspaper industry."

However, combining desks means losing staff. Around 20 positions have been put at risk by this latest initiative, which has prompted the National Union of Journalists to propose a ballot for industrial action that will run from 21 November to 1 December.

The Independent is looking at different ways to make its content more accessible on social media and delivered in a more useful way, said digital media editor Jack Riley on the paper's site.

Riley believes that media organisations have been going too broad with their social media strategies, and that big general Twitter or Facebook accounts are not as useful for readers. "Giving people content in categories which best represent the individual topics in which they're interested" could be a better idea, he thinks.

In order to allow people to specify their interests more precisely, the Independent is looking at tools to let people get their social networks-based news from the paper in tighter categories. You can now 'like' individual commentators, for example, or individual Premiership football teams, to receive dedicated updates on Facebook. Readers are far more likely to be interested in a specific team than sports in general, Riley believes.

The Independent's new daily i is to launch its paid iPad application on Friday, the Guardian reported. The intention, Zach Leonard, managing director for digital at the Independent and the Evening Standard, told the Guardian, is for i to be "media neutral" and the publisher is looking at other digital outlets.

The app will be available for £1.79 for 10 issues of the paper, which amounts to a discount of around 10% on the 20p price of the print product. Twenty copies will be offered for £2.99, a discount of about 25%. The price was intended to be as close to the 20p price as possible, Leonard told the Guardian.

Five extra editions will be offered free to new subscribers to try to encourage more sign-ups. The launch sponsor will be Be Broadband, which will have space on the front page.

i, which provides Independent content edited to provide a more concise reading experience in a younger and more convenient format, was launched on October 26. It has been attracted average daily sales of about 125,000 copies, it was reported on November 8. Vouchers for a free week of i are being offered on the Independent's website.