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Trinity Mirror launching brand new daily newspaper without website

By | Published on Wednesday 24 February 2016

The New Day

If you’ve been worrying that the newsagents of Great Britain might have a hole in their shelving system when The Independent ceases to exist as a print publication next month, well, worry thee not kind sir, as the cool kids are prone to say. Because Trinity Mirror is launching a new daily print title to takes its place.

Whereas the publisher of the Indy was all like “print’s dead granddad, get with the moment, website, website, website, let’s get appy”, rival newspaper firm Trinity Mirror is all “woo, print, that’s what it’s all about baby, boo to the internet, no dead tree, not for me!” I’m paraphrasing slight, I should add. But only a little.

So, yes, The New Day, the new daily paper from the Daily Mirror publisher, will launch next Monday. And while it plans to be active on the socials, the new title won’t have its own website. Because, says The New Day Publishing Director Zoe Harris, the new paper isn’t about breaking news, but about providing a concise, one-stop-shop summary of what happened in the world in the last 24 hours. They should do it as an email. Everyone knows that all the best concise, one-stop-shop summaries of what happened in the (music) world in the last 24 hours come in an email.

“When we talked to consumers about the type of content they wanted, they were able to articulate that there was a gap in the market when it comes to newspapers”, Day told Marketing Week. “There are many places where you can get breaking news online, and with The Mail Online and The Huffington Post, consumers are super served in that space already. When we looked at the opportunity, we thought about where we excel, which is why we’re all about the print experience. Readers can lean back and spend 30 minutes with one title, which is very different from how [consumers] use online”.

The new title in many ways apes the streamlined sister title of the aforementioned The Independent – i – which was sold to the Johnston Press earlier this month, but which will still be able to tap content from the online Indy under a licensing deal. Trinity Mirror was also tipped as a possible buyer for i at one point, but decided to launch its own concise-news-summaries-for-time-light-consumers title instead. The resulting publication, which will operate autonomously from the Mirror, will likely be more tabloidy in feel to its concise paper rival.

The New Day will cost 50p, but will be free on launch day, and 25p for the first two weeks. It will be interesting to see if the whole project finds enough readers and advertisers to be a viable venture long-term. Because unlike other newspapers, it won’t be able to excuse disappointing print sales by saying “oh well, it’s promoting our website, and blimey is that going to be a cash cow operation one day soon… maybe”.



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