Change or die... London's eternal lesson to us all

Like the city it serves, the new Standard must build on the best of the past

- Sarah Sands

I did two spells at the Evening Standard, the first in the late 1980s, the second, as editor, between 2012 and 2017. In that first period of time, we covered the fall of the Berlin Wall, the premiership of Margaret Thatcher, the Big Bang and its consequences, and the drama of Princess Diana, still using typewriters and hot metal.

My second phase of the Evening Standard took us through the London Olympics to Brexit, which we covered with an apocalyptic front page picture of lightning striking Westminster.

Ah, those front pages! But we were no longer holding the front page for breaking news and front pages no longer sold papers. We were in the age of the internet.

And now this is where we are going mostly to exist. It is a commercial imperative and an editorial reincarnation. Change or die.

Shortly before I left, I paid a visit to Facebook to discuss the elephant in the room.

Advertising income. The friendly senior executive offered to improve my digital profile. I laughed in despair: "I don't want a profile. I want the money back."

Beware nostalgia. Recently, I was having lunch with my friend, and former Evening Standard columnist and literary editor, A.N. Wilson at the Ivy restaurant on Kensington High Street, opposite the Evening Standard’s former offices. We were discussing old times, because we have known each other almost 40 years since we met at the newspaper, and we were remembering that about this time of day we would have expected to hear the cry of the newspaper sellers: “Read all about it! Evening Standard! Read all about it!”