Trinity Mirror closes ‘New Day’ after 2 months

Trinity Mirror’s New Day has not lasted long

Newspaper group Trinity Mirror announced today that New Day – the cheap daily paper it launched in late February – will close tomorrow.

The news came in a trading update to the stock market at its annual meeting:

Although The New Day has received many supportive reviews and built a strong following on Facebook, the circulation for the title is below our expectations. As a result, we have decided to close the title on 6 May 2016.

The newspaper group, which owns the Mirror and local newspapers such as the Liverpool Echo, also said the ‘trading environment for print advertising continues to be volatile’.

Under editor Alison Phillips, who formerly ran both the Sunday Mirror and Sunday People, the aim of the experiment was to achieve sales of 200,000 a day, but actual figures as low as 30,000 copies have been reported.

The Guardian columnist and City University academic Roy Greenslade immediately pointed the finger of blame at chief executive Simon Fox in  a comment piece under the headline ‘The New Day got off to a terrible start, and Trinity Mirror’s bosses are to blame‘.

Fox has no experience of running newspapers, having been chief of HMV before moving to Trinity Mirror, although he was a non-executive director at Guardian Media Group.

Sadly, New Day will now have to report its last big story – its own demise.

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Tags: New Day, newspapers, trinity mirror