Regional publisher Trinity Mirror is to affirm its faith in print by launching a new national tabloid by the end of this month, according to reports.
According to a report on Sky News, the new weekday newspaper will be called New Day, and will be initially priced at 25p.
New Day is set to launch on 29 February, the same day as Trinity Mirror’s annual results are due to be revealed.
Trinity Mirror has so far declined to comment on the reports, but former regional press reporter Susie Boniface has confirmed her involvement in the project.
Coupled with the Daily Mirror and TM’s sizeable portfolio of regional newspapers, the new title will further increase the company’s reach in the national advertising market.
The proposed launch comes after regional rival Johnston Press announced its foray into the national market with the purchase of the i for £24m last week.
The same deal saw the announcement that i’s sister titles The Independent and Independent on Sunday would close, while JP has also signalled it may sell off some of its 200-plus local and regional titles.
Susie, a former defence reporter at the Plymouth Herald who blogs under the name ‘Fleet Street Fox’, announced her involvement in the New Day project in a post on Twitter.
The former Sunday Mirror journalist wrote: “Dead chuffed to be one of the team producing a new national newspaper. Unlike the i, it’ll have new content and staff.
“Loads of exciting stuff coming out about it when it launches later this month. More follows later, as we print dinosaurs like to say.”
A report in Media Guardian quoted a ‘media industry source’ who claimed to have been briefed by Trinity Mirror as saying the new title would be aiming for a “mid-market” audience.
Said the source: “A sort of everything for everyone paper in the mid-market rather than a direct attempt at entering the quality market like i. I don’t think you could say it is an attempt to take the market of i.”
Trinity Mirror, which became the UK’s biggest regional publisher with the purchase of Local World in November, is thought to have been working on a new cut-price national title since last year.
According to one report last week, it expressed interest in buying the i but was told the talks with Johnston Press had already progressed too far.
JP has made clear it does not view New Day as a direct competitor to its new acquisition.
A spokesperson for the publisher said: “Trinity Mirror’s new paper is a very different product to the i, aimed at a very different audience. The i, under Johnston Press’ ownership, will remain a quality daily, whereas New Day will be firmly mid-market. The i has growing circulation revenues and we are confident of continuing this trend.”
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Excellent news… but I hope the professional photographers sacked by the regional arm of TM recently weren’t sacrificed to fund what looks like an i spoiler.
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Guardian notes: “Cut-price title is expected to target the same mid-market audience as the Mail and Express”
Did anyone ever say ‘what the world needs is another Express/Mail’ ?
Although not a huge Trinity Mirror fan, good luck to them. Any startup big or small needs applauding in these uncertain times.
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Watch Johnston Press shares take a nosedive.
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The danger of “…A sort of everything for everyone paper” is that without a specific target to aim for you usually miss everything and fall between two posts so its a brave move but one youd hope and assume had been well researched to establish a need?
Staffing and content wise it does sounds to me very much like a case of robbing Peter to pay Paul with the primary purpose of the launch being to add weight to the entire portfolio in the hope of attracting a national,high yielding advertising audience
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JP buy a paper. TM start one. What happened to digital future?
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Spot on assessment @ proprietor
AH has said this is the reason he’s launching this new title
http://m.thedrum.com/news/2016/02/17/johnston-press-ceo-we-bought-i-newspaper-get-scale-and-attract-bigger-advertising
To invest this amount in a declining market just to get more national advertising revenues seems like an expensive and risky strategy to me, no real mention of a top quality content plan
Desperate times, desperate measures
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IT is merely a spoiler and not intended to last very long – an old and effective trade method of hitting the opposition. But if I were the editor, I’d be very uneasy that my new reporter, Susie, has such an ego that she decides to spoil my spoiler by spilling the beans!
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Both JP and TM deluded. Spinning Jenny.
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Looks like Ashley got it a bit wrong with his Digital strategy!
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Looks like both Trinity Mirror and Johnston Press are just trying to wring one last bit of advertising revenue out of the print market before it collapses totally in the next two or three years.
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“…new content and staff”
i would hope the many who have been axed there recently would be given the first chance to apply for the new roles( should they be daft enough to want to )
and when she speaks of “…..More follows later, as we print dinosaurs like to say.”
i`m a bit confused as no doubt she is,why is that phrase aligned to print? or is it just padding for lack of any other facts or information?
you might just as well say ” i`ll get back to you later,as we in print say
if this is typical of the quality of the content we can all look forward to i think the stall has been set out to expect very little
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Great stuff, you can never have too much PA copy to read.
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After drilling it into staff that print is dead, TM now “affirms” its faith in print? Will the New Day newsroom be the only TM newsroom which is not digital first? Will it have a newsroom? Or will it be filled with fed copy from TM regionals? Are the Teesside Gazette’s beloved arms about to get national coverage? Can I stop asking questions about this futile exercise?
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I think I’ll stick with the i
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New Day sounds like an organisation which might one day fall foul of the FBI on the outskirts of Salt Lake City amidst a medley of automatic gunfire and tambourines.
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And it’s being launched on the same day as Trinity’s annual report. Wonder why? Maybe to distract from the dare I say it bad news in the annual report?
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Erm has anybody found a way to make digital news pay yet? Just wondering….
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Hmm. Calling it New Day is a risky strategy if it’s full of yesterday’s news which people have already seen on the telly.
Good luck though. Like everyone else I hope this means new jobs for journalists.
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Oh the irony. Print is dead says Ashley of JP – digital is king. Trinity Mirror also proclaimed print death and yet, here they both are buying and/or launching print products. So – let me summarise – people still like newspapers and there is no money in news-based websites as a stand alone product. Hope for those of us who already knew this then.
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Many mixed messages coming from the AH camp
the futures in digital … So we’re launching in print
We can’t sustain journalists and togs …. So we’re recruiting new ones
The print medium is dying…so we’ve pumped millions into a paper launch
life in newspapers is local …. So we’re after national advertising
Trinity Mirror is to affirm its faith in print……. after telling everyone they’re developing new markets on line
Left hands ,right hands (quote) “…. -‘as we old print dinosaurs say”
At least they’re clear on one thing, they’re not after the ‘quality’ end of the market which doesn’t say a lot for their target audience does it
To me, to you
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Following on from Observer50’s comment, the aforementioned Susie might find herself an ex-reporter of New Day before it’s even launched after breaking what is surely a business confidence with such relish!
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At last! The penny has finally dropped with AH. Print ain’t dead and digital dosen’t pay. Why couldn’t he have applied his new perspective to his local weeklies? Reasonable price, local presence, local in-depth coverage. Instead he let local weeklies shrivel on the vine and now he’s gonna sell them all. Hopefully someone will see the potential of weeklies and run them in the traditional way. Weeklies can be a goldmine IF they are properly run.
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And JP shares are now (Feb 18 PM) back where they were when the i announcement was made!
But still, buying a national newspaper in three days because it emerged that a much larger rival was thinking of starting one was always part of Ashley Highfield’s long term strategy.
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These JP and TM people are far too clever for me. Digital first. Print dead.Life is local but no local staff. Whoops! Print isn’t dead, the corpse is twitching; we just bought a national paper. Oh, and look, we are just starting a new one. Far too sophisticated for me. The guys are under-rated genius.
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Get out the party poppers. Print is back. Digital is dying.
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Like two kids fighting over the crumbs in the bottom of a crisp packet. In 12 months one, or both, will have shut.
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Who’d have thought that an unusual piece of good news- a product launch,and jobs gained – would get such a negative reaction? Very out of character.
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@Observer50: Unless, of course, she was told to do it….
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Print isn’t back, any more than a Roman Reenactment society in Chester signals the return of Octavian Caesar. It will be rehashed PA copy. The Sunday People and Daily Mirror rehash each other’s copy whereas they used to have their own individual news teams. If anyone thinks TM care about editorial quality I’ve got some magic beans to sell.
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Jeff, I’ll have two-doz of those beans, mate, and pile on the salt and vinegar.
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Good news ? Old ad rep
Putting aside the number of jobs lost,places closed, titles consolidated, quality sacrificed, titles merged, money wasted, huge board bonus paid whole staff numbers have been cut and salaries frozen and much much more chaos you see this farcical launch just to grab national add revenues as good news?’
Jeeeeeez
Beggars belief
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Let’s hope the old ad rep isn’t a sales rep for TM as they’ve no interest in local ad revenues or reps having conceded they’ve lost that revenue stream and are bundling up all they can to get the numbers up so as to appeal to the national agency buyers, so much so that they spend millions on launching a newspaper just to buy the ad revenues in.
Still I guess it’s more effective than paying ad reps to sell a few 5x2s on a street feature in the hope of getting enough revenue in to cover costs each period.
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