The London Weekly finally hit the streets last Friday, and the lucky few who got their hands on it weren’t impressed.

The release of the typo-filled chip-wrapping served only to fuel a wave of mystery around the launch: who was actually writing the paper, who’s funding it, why do no companies exist – even whether the title was a hoax was up for grabs.

Those not up-to-date on the title can catch up with my two previous posts (here and here), Help Me Investigate’s frankly brilliant efforts and Media Guardian’s excellent liveblog from Friday.

But digging and speculation will only get us so far. We have found many, many questions, old and new. Now, it feels like time to get some answers, and only the Invincible Group or The London Weekly – or someone close to them – can provide them.

Below is the full text of an email sent to the editorial and commercial teams of the newspaper, and to its parent Invincible. It contains many questions, some fairly difficult. Virtually all need answers if The London Weekly wants to win any credibility with its sceptics – which by now almost certainly includes potential advertisers – and shake off its highly questionable corporate status.

If you know the answer to any question, or have anything else worth asking, either drop me an email (james@jamesrb.co.uk) or use the comments thread below.

If you’re also keen to get answers - or have extra questions of your own - please feel free to RT, repost or add more in the comments.

Re: The London Weekly and the Invincible Group

To whom it may concern,

The launch last week of your new freesheet, The London Weekly, generally met with less-than-favourable reactions. Some thought the product was poor, many thought it stood no chance, and what must be a worrying number of people suspected a hoax. Others had still graver misgivings.

It’s not exactly the PR any new start-up would hope for. So in the interests of putting an end to the speculation, and giving The London Weekly and its owners a chance to clear the record, I’ve gathered together all the major questions regarding the title.

There are quite a few. Scores of people, including myself; Judith Townend of journalism.co.uk; the users of helpmeinvestegate.com; Media Guardian and Twitter users @Coneee, @Kjalee, @VickyJo, @MartinStabe and @PaulMcNally found a string of inconsistencies and puzzling items.

I’ve grouped them together below, and edited them down. All should be straightforward questions for any startup, and answers would serve to reassure readers, potential advertisers, journalists and bloggers as to the viability of the paper. If nothing else, on one or two points, it could serve as a chance to clear the slate.

I will be publishing this letter in full on jamesrb.co.uk. I will publish any response received either by email or on that blog, in full – and promote it on twitter. I will also be encouraging anyone who knows anything about the project to provide answers. For ease, I have numbered the questions, and separated them into subject areas.

Ownership

1. What is the precise nature of the relationship between The London Weekly and the Invincible Group? There is no mention of Invincible on thelondonweekly.co.uk, but the two businesses are run from the same office in Hackney, and share many staff (and web hosting) in common.
2. What involvement does the Invincible Group’s founder Jordan Kensington have with the paper? Is TLW a second attempt at Invincible’s failed freesheet effort from 2007?
3. Who are the Global Publishing Group? Why is it not registered at Companies House? Has it ever made any previous investments – and why haven’t they received any coverage? And why is its editorial director named as Agnes Theresa – better known to most of us as Mother Theresa – the name of Jordan Kensington’s first school.
4. Why has The London Weekly not been registered as a limited company?
5. Given neither TLW or GPG is a registered company, what is the name of the entity paying staff and suppliers?
6. The Invincible Group has been carrying out award ceremonies for a decade – why are none of its named companies registered on Companies House?Does The London Weekly really have £10.5m backing? Can we speak to the backers?
7. Ex-footballer Tony Woodcock – who has previously been involved with Jordan Kensington at awards ceremonies – appeared on ITN as a co-founder of the project. Given his other (unprofitable) businesses are registered on Companies House, why isn’t GPG or TLW?

Commercial

1. The London Weekly was widely said to be very hard to get hold of on both Friday and Saturday. Was its print run 250,000? How many were distributed? Who was the printer?
2. The largest recruitment advert in the first edition was for Zuricom.com. This domain was registered three months ago, to the same office address as The London Weekly and Invincible. What is the association between the companies?
3. The second recruitment ad – for Chisholm and Moore, a genuine recruitment agency working at candm.co.uk points to a non-existent domain chisholmandmoore.co.uk. Why is this?
4. Did advertisers see a preview copy of The London Weekly? Have any been in touch after the publication of the first issue?
5. Your legal disclaimed in the masthead of your first issue – “GPG does not assume any responsibility for all materials published in the paper. However, all material remain copyright to GPG” – is unenforceable. Who advised you on this?
6. Given your difficult first week, are you happy with your PR strategy to date? Is it likely to change?

Editorial

1. Your online list of staff contains more than 50 employees. The printed masthead contained just 14. What happened to the other 36?
2. Several ‘employees’ contacted by The Guardian said they had not spoken to anyone from TLW from several months and had never received any payment. Why, then, were they listed as staff?
3. Others contacted by the paper and by journalism.co.uk said they were not involved full-time with the project. How many full-time staff are working on The London Weekly? How many of these have prior journalistic experience? Where?
4. Until recently, searching for your web developer Arol Figueroldo on google resulted in no hits on any site but yours (a googlewhack). Does he really exist? And if he does – how has a web developer managed to stay entirely off google? More importantly, why?
5. What was behind the decision to employ no copy editors? Will this decision be revised?
6. Have any copyright owners been in contact regarding copy and images lifted from amazon.co.uk (book reviews) and other content, particularly online? If not, how do you intend to respond should this happen in future?
7. Why was your first cover story an almost verbatim press release from 4 days before publication?
8. Why did your first managing editor, Roisin Robertson, depart so shortly after joining The London Weekly?
9. Why have so few contact details for your newsdesk been published? This is a baffling move to any working journalist, who generally relies on being easy to contact in order to find news.
10. What happened to your pledge to use 30% user-generated content in your publication?

Invincible

1. Why does Invincible claim to have offices on the 30th floor of 14 Wall Street – one of the most prestigious business addresses in the world – yet operate out of a monthly-rental office in Hackney? And why, given Wall Street’s location, is the US phone number given based in California?
2. Why has the normally publicity-hungry Jordan Kensington never appeared on the Sunday Times Under 30 rich list given his “estimated” $18m net worth? Who estimated it?
3. Where are Invincible Radio’s “millions of listeners”. The site redirects to a free streaming service with fewer than 20 followers.
4. Is Invincible Magazine still published? Its forum is populated solely by spam and in many categories there have been fewer than 5 news stories in the last 3 months.
5. Why does Invincible group have an “investor relations” page copied and pasted – bizarrely – from Ryanair?
6. The British Music Week website claims to have a mailing list of 200,000 yet has 0 groups, 0 discussions and 0 albums. What gives?

…And finally

1. What, exactly, is The London Weekly trying to achieve?
2. If (as seems ever-more unlikely) TLW is a hoax, what on earth is the punchline?

I look forward to your answers to these points – largely so I can then get on with my life – and to hopefully laying my hands on a copy of the paper.

Best,
James Ball

Jamesrb.co.uk
@Jamesrbuk (Twitter)

Tags: amazon.co.uk, Brand Republic, featured, Invincible, Jordan Kensington, journalism.co.uk, Media Guardian, Roisin Robertson, Sunday Times, The London Weekly

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