So it’s goodbye to London’s Standard, my old paper – and to the heart of democracy, local news | Simon Jenkins

The sad decline of this nearly 200-year-old institution has culminated with a decision to end the daily print edition

They could as well have felled Big Ben, drained the Serpentine or butchered the ravens in the Tower. No more daily print edition of the Evening Standard. No headlines to greet us at every tube station. No cockney cries of: “Read all aba’it!” No news of what celebrity was where last night and with whom.

The Evening Standard, which has announced plans to shutter its daily newspaper i...