A new ‘national’ newspaper for the North of England and South-West Scotland will be launched by an independent regional publisher and the Press Association later this month.
The CN Group has unveiled ’24 – The North’s National’, a 40-page tabloid which will aim to provide a “distinctly Northern perspective” to the nation’s biggest news stories.
Priced at 40p and on sale from 20 June, 24 will target disenfranchised readers of national newspapers looking for a cheaper alternative to what CN has termed “London-centric titles”.
Its circulation area will stretch from Preston in the south to Lockerbie in the north, and Workington in the west to Hexham in the east – roughly corresponding with the patch where the group’s regional titles are currently sold.
A dummy front cover of the CN Group’s new newspaper 24
PA will provide around 95pc of 24’s content including news, lifestyle, features, celebrity gossip and puzzles.
The Monday to Friday newspaper’s sports section will focus on major teams from cities in the North of England and Scotland – including Glasgow, Liverpool, Manchester and Newcastle.
It will be edited by Mike Haworth, who has previously held senior editorial positions at the Daily Express, Sunday Express, Daily Star and Sunday Star.
Two other new jobs will be created as a result of the launch, although no further appointments have yet been made.
Daily contributions will be made by local columnists to the venture, while a new 24 national news section will also be introduced across the group’s existing regional news websites – although the new paper will not have its own standalone site.
The 24 editorial team will have access to news lists from across the group’s titles – which includes regional dailies the Carlisle News & Star and the North West Evening Mail – meaning content could be shared between the titles.
Miller Hogg, CN Group chief executive, said: “24 will fill a large gap in the regional market by providing a northern take on the national headlines. e see our purpose as serving the communities in which we operate, so it follows that CN Group should produce a national newspaper tailored to our patch.
“We know our customers well and have the capacity to print, publish and distribute a new paper for the local market.
“Our collaboration with PA will ensure our readers receive only the highest-quality journalism which delivers the facts devoid of spin, to help readers formulate their own views on the UK’s biggest headlines.”
Tony Watson, managing director of the Press Association, added: “We will work closely with the editorial team at 24 to provide a package of the news and content of most interest to its readers
” We have an exciting summer ahead, packed full of major political and sporting events, and we aim to provide a variety of content and services to sharpen the appeal of this vibrant new publication.”
National advertising for 24 will be managed by Mediaforce, the UK’s largest independent sales house.
CN Group editorial director David Helliwell said: “After so much doom and gloom for the industry this is an exciting new development.
“We believe we have the right package of content and design, spiced with a distinctly northern flavour, to provide a viable alternative in the national newspaper market.”
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Save your money…not a cat in hell’s chance of succeeding.
Remember the North West Times or something back in the eighties?
There must be an ulterior motive behind this launch perhaps buried deep in the bowels of some accountants somewhere.
CN have always had a good reputation in Cumbria, but Cumbria is very, very, very traditional. Readers there still think of England as it was in 1950. The awful mock-up page looks like something designed for Middlesbrough.
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I’d give this the roughly the same odds of surviving the summer as a three-legged whippet winning in the 5.10 at Doncaster. Unless this product is handed out free at local transport hubs, there’s no chance of persuading a new audience to change their existing paper, or even to start picking one up for the first time – New Day proved that.
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The very best of luck to them, it’s an interesting idea but judging by the front page, which is all we have to go on for now, it’s going to need a lot of work. Here’s why:
1. It’s called 24 – presumably because it is round the clock coverage. So it is already alluding to a website because, as we know, newspapers are rather set. If then it is appealing to the disenfranchised newspaper reader why not give it a name that suggests a newspaper of northern record?
2. The dummy page does not suggest anything distinctively northern… apart from the phrase ‘The North’s National’. All the rest of the content could have come from anywhere. As a dummy to inspire interest it therefore fails. And suggests it wants to be like a national newspaper but without any distinctive original coverage on wider national and international events.
3. If this is for disenfranchised newspaper readers why does the front page have fewer than 70 words? I’m counting the date and the page numbers. There is a market for newspaper readers, who may actually want to read words. It may be the lack of them written in an intelligent and interesting way that causes readers to be disenfranchised in the first place.
4. Relying on the content from other titles is all very well but the editor will find the reporters trying to protect their own stories. It’s what happened to the Western Morning News on Sunday. In fact CN would be wise to learn many of the lessons from that particular failure.
5. Features and comment content in a national is very different from that is a small regional or weekly newspaper. It must be bolder, go beyond the boundaries and interests of the patch. Too often the columnists hold back for fear of upsetting too many people. You shouldn’t rely on your current stable.
6. Exactly who are they appealing? The front page looks like a busy tabloid but – and please take note of this – the advert is for Farrow and Ball. Do the marketing or advertising teams really believe the two readers are one and the same thing? I’d say no. If you get F&B, the world’s poshest paint makers to advertise, you need a product that is going to appeal to that demographic. (I know this is a dummy and this may just be wishful thinking by advertising).
In conclusion (yup, sorry for banging on) the paper needs to know who it’s market is. A newspaper for the North needs to have a strong identity and while PA is great it can’t provide the sort of distinctive voice that is needed.
Overall it looks, from this limited perspective, a little like the TrinityMirror disaster NewDay. I just hope I’m proved wrong and it goes from strength to strength.
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Grand idea, but ’24 – The North’s National’ is too much of a mouthful. Best of luck with it!
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Not an area of high population, but a group with a good reputation. Good luck to them.
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Percy Hoskins, that is the most brilliant post I have seen on HTFP for ages. You wish them luck… then proceed in the most forensic and comprehensive way possible to demolish the initiative (quite rightly), and then come back to hoping it goes from “strength to strength”, immediately after a reference to TM’s abysmal New Day. Anyway, I don’t think this publication will survive to Christmas – I’m not a northerner but those of my acquaintance can spot a wrong ‘un a mile off and aren’t shy to say so. Now, where’s the next hopeless cause coming from?
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Have I missed PA doing regionalised national coverage? Will northern MPs be selected to comment in national stories for instance. Just can’t see this being a winner.
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This is the most ridiculous proposition I’ve ever seen in newspapers. New Day lasted about 10 weeks with the entire resource of TM behind it. Now CN thinks it can pull together a fragmented collection of northern towns and provide information that anyone with an iPhone can pull down from the Internet for free and sell it – it just beggars belief. who are the people who make these decisions – they have no commercial judgement whatsoever.
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Come on guys. We whinge papers close and jobs are lost, we moan when new papers open and jobs are created. CN have a good reputation, I’d back them to succeed over JP or TM any day.
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Hard to believe – I can’t fathom who’s sanctioned this idea or why. Who the devil will buy this, what sort of reader are they after? I doubt many of us have any interest in what happens in the village a mile down the road, never mind the next big town. If I ever switch on BBC local news, I switch off the main story is from Liverpool as I’m from North Manchester. I doubt I am on my own. Is it an easier way to get rid of more staff when it fails?
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Gus Flair, look that post wraps up my never ending enthusiasm for local newspapers iniatives with 30 years experience of being a cynical newspaper man… You can be hope. And if any publishers need a launch editor I’m here all week…
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The North remembers
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Not enough people are paying for some of the excellent local weeklies on that patch. I can’t see them forking out 40p for a quasi-national tabloid.
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Why are we always so jaundiced when something new is about to happen? Percy Hoskins has done a demolition job and there is very little encouragement elsewhere! However northern bias does not just happen. It does need to show that the influence is genuinely northern, not just something certain people in the south want to make a few bob out of. Hopefully it will have a true flavour of the area it wishes to hightlight. With very best wishes for a successful venture. Ken Jackson
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A bold venture but sadly lacking in any kind of identity. Fine lads and lasses at PA in the north. But they’re more or less manacled to Manchester and Liverpool so that whole swathe of the Red Rose County, under their remit, will be merely represented by the quickest turnaround press releases 24 can muster. Or the cast-offs from the existing Lancashire titles.
And with the best will in the world very few people in Preston, Lancaster, Blackpool, Blackburn or Burnley know or care about what’s going on in Carlisle, Barrow or Kendal.
Three extra jobs for a new title as well? CN have been paying close attention to Trinity Mirror, Newsquest and JP, it would appear.
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The people behind this ridiculous decision must be reading through these comments, their initial excitement draining from their tiny minds as they realise what a big mistake they’ve made…
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Just hope the finished product is an improvement on the mock-up.
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So it’s a national with a northern slant? Why is there a global story on the front with little relevance even to the UK, never mind the north?!
It’s called 24… but you’re only bringing it out Monday to Friday? Well I guess it’s not called 24/7 but even so…
This says everything about the kind of numpties running local newspapers these days.
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Any details as whether the newspaper has a web page as well?
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Boyo, I suspect they know at CN that it’s going to fail, that’s what annoys me about this.
Percy Hoskins summed it up perfectly, it’s a ridiculous idea. I’m all for innovation in journalism but this just seems like an attempt to earn a quick buck before the inevitable closure of the publication.
We know there is no appetite for such a newspaper. We know there is little appetite for any kind of newspaper.
By using “95 per cent PA” they are printing old content from an editorial staff which has seen huge cuts. Believe me the quality ain’t what it used to be.
It will save money on using their own staff though, of course, so Mediaforce may be able to bring in some early cash for CN, and with the tiniest of skeleton staffs working on it, overheads will be fewer than normal for a new launch.
So make a few quid then close it, before advertisers and the public grow tired of it. That shouldn’t take long.
And then lay off the few journalists employed to work on it.
I fear this is a vision of the money men, it’s certainly not the desperately needed new age of journalism.
It’s the last thing journalism needs.
Those behind it should hang their heads in shame.
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The scores so far:
Positive views: 5
Neutral views: 3
Negative views: 10
Who will win? A special prize awaits the winner, mind!
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It’s launching a perilous new venture which is, I suspect, intended as a rival to JP’s I, and which has clearly been sold by the commercial department as a holy grail to bring in so much national advertising that they need never go & do their proper local jobs again. If it needed to save all that money to launch it, it means it’s not as strongly based a company as it needs to be (and TM is) to risk either a very long, loss-making haul or a total failure. This will weaken it, therefore, and what happens to weak companies? They get predated. Don’t do it, CN. It will destroy you, however good the product is, and Cumbria needs you.
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Because a sports fan in Preston wants to know about the goings on at Celtic and Rangers? And a reader in Middlesbrough wants the latest about a court case in Liverpool?
I’m not sure what would be more annoying as a Yorkshireman, Lancastrian or, incredibly in this case, Scot – a deluge of London-centric news in national papers or suits in a newspaper company assuming everyone can be lumped together as ‘northern’ like it’s all one and the same ‘from Preston in the south to Lockerbie in the north, and Workington in the west to Hexham in the east’.
Best of luck and all that, but this is just going to go the same way as New Day…
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The News and Star is now a morning paper, sales are plummeting and the standard of journalism has gone downhill. Are CN planning to axe the failing News and Star and replace it with this paper, thus saving a small fortune on staff? 95% content from PA and a sprinkling of local news on the front page, a couple of local columns and a backpage story for each city?
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Will it work – nope
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Sadly, can’t see this catching on. I understand the frustration at all things ‘London-centric’ but since devolution there is so much difference between what is happening in Scotland and what is happening just a few miles over the border in the North of England. In attempting to be all things to all Northern readers there’s a danger this new publication will fall between two stools and will end up serving neither constituency very well.
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It now becomes clear why they made the N&S a morning paper! How long until the N&S disappears for good?!
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Surely the antidote to a London-centric media is a good quality local paper providing, among other aspects, a local slant on national events? I fear for local papers if this is the “solution!”.
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Er, a northern newspaper that isn’t on sale in the north’s two main population areas? Since when has Preston been the southern edge of “the north”. If you’re writing about Liverpool and Manchester why on earth wouldn’t it be on sale there – for the sake of one or two extra distribution drops?
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What about… An evening newspaper with proper reporters, photographers, subs and an editor. A paper that directs you to a website where you can see perhaps more pix and, if the story warrants it, a video? The story on the website is just the “bare bones” but directs you to the paper for more pix, more in depth coverage and other, different things in that evenings paper. The paper would have a newsdesk, picture desk, sports desk and features desk all liasing with each other. The advt team would liase with each desk editor to target advertisers accordingly.
My idea needs tweaking. Is there anybody out there, who, independently can do this and sustain the jobs necessary to the operation?
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Why do journo’s,and sad ex-journo’s think that the local populace want to buy a local paper at all….?
Times change,people change and sadly many are not community interested…
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So the paper is to be politically-neutral? Well it has to be if its relying to 95% on PA stories. Unlike the News and Star which is unashamedly pro-Tory.
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Trying to take the emotion out of this, I wonder to what extent the CN team and the CEO have answered the following questions:
1. What has the qualitative research told them about what the paper should stand for, how it should look, what content it should carry?
2. What has the market research told them about the geography and why it makes sense as a cohesive area? (I’d agree with other commentators that it is either too small or way too big – but certainly has no cohesion.)
3. More important, in their quantitative research, how many people have said they will buy this paper, and how many days each week? And whether they will buy it instead of, or as well as, their existing paper? (Presume some specific competitive advantage has been identified.)
4. And even more important, how much have they said they are prepared to pay for it?
If the CN Board has not asked these questions, particularly the NEDS, they are not doing their job properly. If they have, and the answers are positive, then good luck to them. If not, it may be better for the finances of the business to eat humble pie now.
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So where’s the journalism from HTFP? Shouldn’t you be asking the bosses at CN: “In light of all the criticism of this idea from people within our industry, is it still a good idea?”
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So sad to see CN abandoning any pretence of journalistic standards. Quality content and well informed or provocative opinion still pulls in readers; rehashed and largely irrelevant PA copy does not. I wonder if there is a single journalist on the board who sanctioned this piece of nonsense. Or is the brainchild of the quick buck merchants? This launch smacks of tired desperation.
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I’m confused. Is this a paper that’s including stories from around a wide area or is it a paper that is taking national stories and putting a northern slant on them? Either way seems a bit desperate to me. Are people in Preston remotely interested in those in Lockerbie and vice versa? Also the cover story seems to imply “hey guys, there was a plane blown up in Egypt and we found out two of the people on board came from the North.” The North-South divide continues!
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This isn’t going to make a quick buck. It’s going to lose money from day 1. It’s completely obvious to anyone who’s not wrapped up in their own ego that this project is just doomed to failure. I’m surprised the Burgess family are prepared to entertain such complete none sense.
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A New Day dawns….I take it the title refers to either a) How many copies will be sold on average, or b) how many days it will last. And this is a paper that just got rid of several senior journalists recently.
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Agree with Mike Lowe’s earlier comment.
Maybe it should be a free. Oh no, CN has just got rid of two frees!
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Incredibly brave move but I just can’t see it being around for long…
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Winter is coming…
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if the paper is not a success do as Ned said – The man who passes the sentence should swing the sword
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I wish them well with this venture but it would be better to concentrate on local news. As New Day proved, it is very hard in this digital age to get a new ‘national’ newspaper up and running.
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I was recently thinking how refreshing it would be for a truly national newspaper to be produced in the north, obviously with a small satellite office in London. Covering national/international news, but with a different outlook from the current crop – which are so London-centric it must be alienating if you don’t live there.
Think this misses the mark slightly.
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On an unrelated note, London 24 has just tweeted that it will cease publication
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Hope this ambitious idea succeeds… just to annoy the commenting curmudgeons on this thread!
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Find multiskilled journalists interested in everything. Put them on the ground just like snapper says but mix up the skill set and it will have a chance.
I worked and work as a PJ that’s photojournalism to all the dinosaurs who write here. Back in the 1990s when I trained most of you hated multiskilling and probably still do. It was damned hard to get a job, most editors and companies wanted a hack or snapper.
Young Mr Harmsworth took a chance though and retained two snappers by combining roles.
Better to be multiskilled – which now includes a bit of video , a front-page lead and perhaps some local court, which people incidentally, than not working or is it?
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Oops…. Incidentally love
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