New UK newspaper to launch despite declining readership

A new “optimistic” and “politically-neutral” national newspaper will be launched by publisher Trinity Mirror at the end of the month – and will not have a website, bosses have revealed.

It will run to 40 pages and be available free from more than 40,000 retailers on its first day, Monday February 29.

“Over a million people have stopped buying a newspaper in the past two years but we believe a large number of them can be tempted back with the right product”, he said.

She said: “There are many people who aren’t now buying a newspaper, not because they have fallen out of love with newspapers as a format, but because what is now available on the newsstand is not meeting their needs”.

A monk reads a newspaper on a bench draped in Union Flags outside the Lindo Wing of St Mary’s Hospital, where the Duchess of Cambridge is expected to give birth, in London July 18, 2013.

It said in a statement this morning: “The New Day will cover news and topical content but with a modern style and tone, aimed at a wide audience of women and men who want something different from what is now available”.

Phillips said she was targeting a “huge area in the middle” of readers of the Sun and readers of the Guardian, a group of people who didn’t want to be “told what to think” any longer.

Johnston Press is a key competitor to Trinity Mirror in the regional newspaper market but Trinity Mirror has denied the two are connected, saying a new publication can not be dreamt up overnight.

“You can’t dream up a new title overnight”, he said. The launch comes soon after The Independent, the last standalone national daily to launch – in 1986 – announced it would cease print operations and become digital only.

Phillips added that newspapers had “continued to put news out for the same way for 100 years” but hadn’t adapted to the “bomb” of that the internet has represented for the United Kingdom media. “A female editorial skew will position the new paper directly with the Daily Mail, which is the most fearsome competitor in Fleet St”.

It will be designed with a turquoise masthead and printed on higher quality paper than its sister publication.

Simon Fox, chief executive of Trinity Mirror, told BBC Radio 4’s Today Programme: “It’s an idea we’ve been working on for over a year, after talking to thousands of readers”.

The paper will not have a website, however, the publishers have said it will have a social media presence instead.