Paper Monitor
12:42 UK time, Friday, 26 March 2010
A service highlighting the riches of the daily press
Funny what a pound can buy you these days... a copy of a newspaper such as the Guardian, the Daily Telegraph, a day's unlimited perusal of the Times' website () or the Independent.
Not simply a copy of the Indy - though that, indeed, is the cover price of the paper - ... the newspaper, its full complement of staff, its archive, its printing contracts and so on. Oh, and just as all newspapers these days like to include a freebie sweetener - a DVD, discount restaurant vouchers, that sort of thing - so the Indy's former owners threw in the Independent on Sunday for good measure.
Why a pound? Well (and for those who didn't read the first time around) anyone who has had the good fortune to study the law of contract will know this is all about *consideration*, although a friend of Paper Monitor's whose dad bought a company for a pound informs it that, in that instance at least, the sum never actually changed hands.
Reading the small print of the Independent deal it turns out the former owner actually paid the purchaser £9.25m to take the paper of its hands. Why not just settle on £9,249,999 and be done with it?
The 
