Amol Rajan has revealed he knew when taking over The Independent newspaper he would be its last editor.
Writing in The Spectator today, he said: "I knew, the minute my job was first mooted, on the steps of San Francesco church in the sun-drenched, mafia-infested Sicilian town of Noto, that I would be the last editor of the (printed) Independent.
"This fact was reinforced at 17.21 on my first day, when the daily email from our circulation department put the figure for our paid-for circulation at 42,000.
"The closure of the Independent’s print edition was a long time coming but that doesn’t stop it being a painful shock."
In an interview with Press Gazette in September 2014, Rajan said: “One of the deepest and most absurd myths – and most ubiquitous myths – about newspapers is the idea that the future of newspapers is unclear.
"There’s nothing unclear about it: the future’s digital."
Rajan was named editor of The Independent at the age of 29 in 2013.
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