Defying doomsday predictions about traditional journalism, the UK on Monday welcomed its first standalone national print newspaper in 30 years.
The newspaper will trial at 25p ($0.35) for two weeks before the price is raised to 50p ($0.70). Its publishing company Trinity Mirror, whose flagship paper is the tabloid Daily Mirror, hopes the new title may find a particular readership among women. The New Day“s editor Alison Phillips said: “There are many people who aren’t currently buying a newspaper, not because they have fallen out of love with newspapers as a format, but because what is currently available on the newsstand is not meeting their needs.”
The front page of Monday’s first edition of The New Day features the picture of a little boy alongside the headline “Stolen childhood,” teasing an in-depth report about the pressures being placed on young children to help take care of fellow family members.
The first edition also features a piece penned by British Prime Minister David Cameron, in which he warns that the country faced a “decade of uncertainty” if it decided to leave the EU.
The new daily sees the light of day despite a sharp decline in sales across the industry, with readers switching to news websites and social media. Another well-regarded British daily, The Independent, recently announced it would run its last print edition on March 20.
Across the Atlantic, meanwhile, old-school daily journalism got some glitzy recognition Sunday night when the movie Spotlight, which chronicles the Boston Globe“s Pulitzer-Prize winning investigative report into priest sex abuse, won the Academy Award for Best Picture.
