A new national daily newspaper for the North hit the streets for the first time this morning with a print run in excess of 30,000 copies.
24, which is being launched by Carlisle-based regional publisher the CN Group, is promising an alternative to “London-centric” news coverage.
It splashed its launch issue with the revelation that a 12-year-old boy had been banned from attending football matches amid fears of a new generation of football hooliganism.
Its back page, meanwhile, featured the news that Manchester United’s Wayne Rooney would be dropped for England’s Euro 2016 match against Slovakia this evening.
The new title will aim to offer a distinctively Northern slant on national stories for “readers looking for a less expensive alternative to London-centric titles.”
Its launch comes weeks after the closure of the short-lived tabloid New Day, which was the first new national newspaper for 30 years.
David Helliwell, editorial director at CN Group, said: “We’re well aware that launching a paper into the national market will raise eyebrows.
“Like Trinity Mirror, we want to try new things, to see what else we can do to build audiences. Some will work and some may not but we won’t die wondering.”
Priced 40p, the 40-page tabloid will circulate in an area of the North West stretching from Preston in the south to Lockerbie in the north and Workington in the west to Hexham in the east.
Two new jobs have been created as a result of the launch.
The new paper will be edited by Mike Haworth, who has previously held senior editorial positions at Express Newspapers, while the original design work on the title has been done by Peter Sands and Mike Brough.
Most of the content for 24 is being provided through the Press Association, who have worked with CN on developing more ‘northern’ content. The 24 editorial team will also have access to content produced by CN’s regional titles.
Miller Hogg, chief executive of the CN Group, said: “24 will fill a large gap in the regional market by providing a northern take on the national headlines.
“We 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.”
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It looks distinctly “regional”. Not a bad thing, obviously, but not quite what you’d expect from a national. And what the hell does Flintoff’s Ocean Smacker tell anyone – just journalists trying their hands at lame puns?
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Good luck. It won’t make it to Christmas, but all the best to everyone involved in this doomed mission.
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They’re going to regret that splash typeface…
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Six journalists to cover that area…..just be PA with tweaks, lucky if it lasts until Christmas.
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Think Slate Grey needs to rebrand as Deepest Black.
Reminds me of the doom-mongers who used to sit at the back of NUJ chapel meetings predicting (loudly, repetitively and never with a positive word to say on any topic) that whatever strategy/approach/discussion was being mooted would fail.
Not that they were always wrong, of course, but their level of undiluted pessimism always made me wonder why they bothered clambering out of bed each day.
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Is Richard Smith looking at the same front page as me?
It looks like a classic Metro front page.
Is the 12-year-old boy banned from the North West? You just couldn’t tell from the way the lead story has been packaged.
And a back page featuring a picture of Rosberg? Doesn’t really scream the north.
As time pressures increase will become just a mish mash of national PA and the occasional North West story.
The overall feel will leave readers underwhelmed. They they will get the perception it’s not full of news about the North?
Or is that North of England or Northern Britain?
Give people an room to get to confused and they will
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Good luck! It won’t make it to September, but enjoy the experience while you can.
Jump right in, don’t worry about making mistakes. It will make you stronger for your next (and hopefully much longer) journalistic career move.
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Less of a chance than TM’s New Day. Looks/sounds/feels like a vanity project. CN don’t have a new bloke at the helm, do they? There are still print opportunities out there, but this reminds me of the Yorkshire on Sunday launch back in the day. Great effort from editor Mike Glover and team, but a blind stab at a market that no one was sure existed. And guess what – it didn’t. Three months for this? Maybe four? Good luck guys, you’ll need it.
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Good luck. A brave venture – nothing ventured, nothing gained. I hope it works.Content counts far more than design. That in my view is where New Day made a mistake.
Let’s be positive, folks.
Best wishes to all involved. It would be good if the Christmas referred to in Slate Grey’s comment is many years away.
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Good luck to everyone involved. There is plenty of room for innovation in a declining market.
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Ian Halstead – Seems unfair to single me out for criticism when many here are saying exactly the same thing.
I think you’ll find my observations are based on many, many years of being in an industry I have been passionate about since I was a determined young girl in the smoke-filled, male-dominated newsrooms of the 1970s.
You?
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CN seems so confident it hasn’t been put on their corporate website
http://www.cngroup.co.uk/products-and-services/publications/
Wonder what they define as ‘the north’? Unfortunately I can’t find a media pack to tell me.
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Excellent – I live in the heart of the north so I’ll go and buy a copy. Just need to find a stockist in Liverpool or Manchester first…
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Never heard of anone being banned from the North West before. Can Mark Flanagan tell us how that works?
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Interesting points from Danny Lockwood. This feel of this new paper reminds me more of the short-lived News and Echo, launched at the same time as Yorkshire on Sunday by David Sullivan and edited by Tony Livesey. Yorkshire on Sunday, which survived for three years, was a decent paper. Good luck to all involved with this one.
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Yes, good luck! It’s worth a go.
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“Two new jobs have been created as a result of the launch”
…..nuff said.
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What a load of naysayers!
It’s got a print run of 40,000 so they’re obviously starting small and costed accordingly.
A team of six might be enough to pull it off given the mix of PA copy and nous.
It just might work.
So good luck to ’em.
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I would be very interested to hear Peter Sands’s thinking on the design. I won’t go over my previous comments but they can be found under the story that announced its launch.
But they are, in summary: why do you think a red top tabloid-style is going to work in attracting newspaper readers?
And while we await an answer would some of you subs be able to tell me how many different kinds of font there are on the front page? (for extra marks what are they? and how many different sizes?)
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Eh hem. Percy: I don’t think there’s any subs left out here.
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Best of luck to all concerned. You’ll probably need it.
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Who says print is dead. Good luck to everyone involved!
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As a former Borderer, I think there’s room for a daily newspaper in this area, given the real lack of anything distinctly ‘local’ on Border TV or the BBC’s Look North/Reporting Scotland offering for this area. It’s a bold patch from Preston to Lockerbie and Hexham, and my only concern is that it might struggle to appeal to sports fans on both sides of the border… I can’t really see one of its six reporters travelling to the north of Scotland to see Queen of the South away on a midweek game…
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Quite right Echo… Can any former subs please tell me…. See above
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Yes, come on Slate Grey, snap out of it and get positive, a la Ian Halstead’s funky groove thang. Anyway, I have just returned from a four-month Siberian speleology expedition and, after a good kip, I am going to my local curated content agent to purchase the latest editions of 24 and New Day. Oh, I’m so pleased newspapers are back and thriving!
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Can’t win with you lot.
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Good to see a rare element of balance in the comments today. In an industry which faces huge challenges and still has dedicated staff trying their best in tough circumstances (across all groups), we should celebrate an attempt to try something new. This venture has even created a couple of jobs. Good on CN – and shame on the doom merchants. It may well fail, but at least they will have given it a crack.
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And where have you won, Sebastian Dangerfield? Stillinit: yes, at least TM gave it a crack with New Day. Which is what anyone who thinks this will work must be smoking.
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All well and good to applaud 2 new jobs being created, but does anyone know how many voluntary redundancies have gone through since this article from 09/02/2016?
‘HTFP understands that a third of the existing 21 production roles are likely to go and that two editor positions are also under threat.’
I understand that 2 editors and a number of journalists have already gone and with this new publication mirroring their daily titles (News & Star/North West Evening Mail) plus some wildly optimistic additional territory that is in reality a slight extension of what they have already – or could this be just a cover to help address the £600k which they are looking to save (also detailed in that same article) through an alternative title that costs a lot less to produce?
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Well done to ‘Boss’ and the team who have put this together. Good to see something targeted at the north (Preston up to Dumfries); ignore the negative comments from the soft southerns and those in the Peoples Republic of Yorkshire. For those of us who like chips n gravy, we know where you are coming from – best of luck. DD.
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All this negativity suggesting it won’t last until Christmas. Ridiculous.
It won’t last a month.
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I don’t know if anyone’s noticed, but there’s a screaming deficit of comments on HTFP from contributors with commercial experience (and no, not the JP budget monkeys still diligently destroying that business). “Interesting and relevant content”, which was the one thing Yorkshire on Sunday had, only takes any product so far. It remains an advertising-led business which makes real readership numbers and not clickbait rubbish an absolute imperative. I would refer people to a large-scale independent launch which did build a niche – Paul Stannard’s Kent on Sunday (and it ‘bought’ its market with a huge free distribution). But times have changed, nowhere more than in the world of regional dailies. Despite the well-meaning well wishes of misty-eyed journalists, many of whom live vicarious post-redundo lives on here, this romantic project is doomed. Sorry.
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I’m sorry Stillinit, our cynicism comes from the muddle-headed thinking of the people in charge of today’s newspaper industry. We are desperately want to see new projects survive and thrive, but as with New Day we know a dog when we see one.
For me, I’m curious about who the paper is aimed at? I don’t believe there are professional Northerners, who will only buy it because it proclaims that it is a national newspaper for the North.
It crosse”national boundaries” so immediately runs into a problem of two different legal and political systems. Do you have to explain say “Not proven” to the English, even if the concept is perfectly understood by Scots etc?
There is a nationalist resurgence in Scotland, how is that dealt with?
Also is such a “lively” newspaper going to appeal to the hardcore of newspaper audiences? What papers are they going to take readers from?
A paper spanning the whole of the North of England may have made more sense – a reminder of the glory days of The Manchester Guardian. But even here it comes unstuck, the Northern Echo is one of the few decent papers left in the Newsquest stable, so that may have directed thinking.
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I work for CN and there are no illusions here that no one knows whether 24 will work or not. However, most of us have taken heart from the fact that the company isn’t just laying down to die but is instead at least trying to fight back.
If it works then who knows what the future holds. And if it doesn’t work? At least we tried.
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Danny Lockwood… can you have a “screaming deficit?”
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Percy Hoskins: Yes, you can. I think I am one…
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