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 in favour of a digital service and weekly magazine, was truly a London institution. Its tabloid rivals, the Star and Evening News, merged in 1960 and closed in 1980, but there was always a touch of class to the Standard. For journalists told to start their careers working local", it was a golden step to a proper Fleet Street job. Londoners needed to read the Standard.

Simon Jenkins is a Guardian columnist