Staff of The Independent, who felt a little relief late last year when bosses at Irish parent company Independent News & Media resisted calls by one key shareholder to closedown the UK broadsheet, are now bracing themselves for a change in ownership.

Evening Standard owner Alexander Lebedev has been negotiating to buy the struggling title since last month, and some seem to think the takeover is now a done deal. Conveniently the Indy is already based in the Daily Mail's West London HQ, where the Evening Standard is also housed. The big news this weekend was that if the deal does go through journalist and former Today programme chief Rod Liddle would be appointed editor of the paper.

The Guardian's Roy Greenslade writes this morning that that news has gone down very badly at the Indy. He writes: "One senior journalist told me: 'This is a further example of disappointing editorial appointments [here]. There was the calamity of Janet Street-Porter [formerly editor of the Independent On Sunday] and, despite some good qualities, [current Indy editor] Roger Alton has been the wrong choice too. But Liddle would be much worse. It's like replacing George Bush with Dick Cheney'".

Some are saying Liddle's appointment would be commercial suicide for the Indy, but given only about 47 people currently read the paper, surely a radical change is needed?