UK gets 1st national daily in 30 yrs for 'time-poor' readers

One of Britain's largest newspaper groups today announced plans to launch the country's first 'standalone national daily' in 30 years that will have a "ruthless edit of the day" for "time-poor readers", days after another top daily declared it will wind up its print edition.

Trinity Mirror group, publishers of left-leaning Daily Mirror and Sunday Mirror, launches 'The New Day' on February 29.

"It will report with an upbeat, optimistic approach and will be politically neutral," a Trinity Mirror statement said.

Editor Alison Phillips said readers "only have 30 minutes" and "everyone is time-poor nowadays."

"This paper has been created as a result of customer insight and is the first newspaper designed for people's modern lifestyles," Phillips said.

Speaking on BBC Radio 4 she said: "Whilst we have continued to put newspapers out in a fairly similar way for 100 years, there has been a massive nuclear bomb gone off in the media world with the advent of the internet, and we have created a newspaper which reflects that and understands that.

"So, whilst now there is a breaking story and people have got news alerts on their phones all the time, what they quite often want is a ruthless edit of the day - this is what they need to know."

The New Day, with a blue masthead, will run to 40 stapled pages every day on thicker-than-normal newsprint.

It will be available free from over 40,000 retailers on launch day, and will be priced at 25 pence for the following two weeks before selling at 50 pence after that.

The new title comes despite a sharp decline in newspaper sales as readers switch to online sources. But chief executive Simon Fox said he hoped the paper would "arrest the decline."

The Independent and The Independent on Sunday newspapers recently announced closure of their print editions from next month as they go digital-only.

"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," Fox said.

"Revitalising print is a core part of our strategy in parallel with digital transformation and there doesn't have to be a choice between the two - newspapers can live in the digital age if they have been designed to offer something different."

The paper will not have a website but will have a social media presence. It is to be pitched at people aged 35 to 55, who want "a more modern approach to news," the group said.

Setting itself apart from The Independent-linked 'i' newspaper, Fox added: "This is a completely new newspaper. It's not a 'Mirror light' in any way."