Not so much a paper, more a battleground  It was 'less a
poisoned chalice than a pint glass of lukewarm ricin', wrote one
of the Independent's more transitory editors. But, over 10 years
of dogged stability, Simon Kelner has drained much of that
poison out of the system. Now he departs upstairs, leaving his
old mate, and the Observer's recently departed editor, Roger
Alton, to take his chair. Simon talks necessary 'profitability'.
Roger talks 'senses of specialness', 'indispensability' and
'progressive' politics. Mine's a tentative pint of mild and
bitter, please.  The bitterness, of course, belongs to pitch-
black Irish stout: that compelling, convulsive brew of a battle
for control of Independent News & Media under way between the
O'Brien and O'Reilly media clans. But the mildness - stripped of
emotion, even the palpable sense of passion that Alton brings to
his editing work - lies in simpler tests and plainer figures. He
and the incoming team around him will be Tony O'Reilly's first
line of defence against