Short answers, pulled from the story.
The Independent was founded in 1986, with its first issue published on the 7th of October 1986 in broadsheet format. It was created by Andreas Whittam Smith, Stephen Glover, and Matthew Symonds, all former journalists at The Daily Telegraph.
The Independent closed its print edition in March 2016 to become a purely digital media company. The last printed edition was published on Saturday the 26th of March 2016.
The Independent was sold to Alexander Lebedev's family company in 2010 for a nominal £1 fee plus £9.25 million. In 2017, Sultan Muhammad Abuljadayel acquired a 30% stake in the publication.
The Independent is generally described as centrist, centre-left, and liberal-left. It takes a liberal, pro-market stance on economic issues while leaning toward the left wing of the political spectrum, making it a closer competitor to The Guardian than to The Times or The Daily Telegraph.
In July 2011, Independent columnist Johann Hari was stripped of the Orwell Prize he had won in 2008 after admitting to plagiarism and inaccuracy. Editor Chris Blackhurst told the Leveson inquiry in January 2012 that the scandal had "severely damaged" the newspaper's reputation.
The Independent began producing both broadsheet and tabloid-sized compact editions from September 2003. The last weekday broadsheet was printed on the 14th of May 2004, following the earlier discontinuation of the Saturday broadsheet edition in January of that year.