The Independent effectively having to function under siege from sacked print workers picketing outside. "The Independent" attracted some of the staff from the two Murdoch broadsheets who had chosen not to move to his company's new headquarters. Launched with the advertising slogan "It is. Are you?", and challenging both "The Guardian" for centre-left readers and "The Times" as the newspaper of record, "The Independent" reached a circulation of over 400,000 by 1989. Competing in a moribund market, "The Independent" sparked a general freshening of newspaper design as well as, within a few years, a price war in the market sector. When "The
Metro (British newspaper) Sun". He told a press conference he was watching the free newspaper market "keenly and apprehensively". Murdoch's News International subsequently launched a London-based evening freesheet in 2006 called "The London Paper". This was closed on 18 September 2009. "London Lite" was another free, evening newspaper published in central London only from 2006 to 2009, at the time owned by the same parent company as "Metro", and was seen as a 'spoiler' to protect against the commercial threat from "The London Paper". Another rival is the "London Evening Standard", which became a freesheet in 2009, although unlike "Metro" it is only