It was unsurprising that many predicted the writing on the wall for Britains newest print newspaper, The New Day, before the writing even got on the page.
It was brazen for a print publication to ambitiously attempt to defy the decline of the UKs print news industry, but as Simon Fox, Trinity Mirrors chief executive conceded, getting readers who have lapsed out of print to come back to the market was harder than anticipated. The facts are that two months in The New Day was selling about 40,000 not the 200,000 copies anticipated.
Death by digital revolution is the obvious culprit. The New Day did not have a website, instead it relied solely upon social media. Since 2000, total daily sales of UK national newspapers have almost halved to less than 8m, strengthening the notion that younger readers are unwilling to pay 25p or 50p (The New Days prices) to read what they can get elsewhere for free.
It is clear that the publication failed at being the exciting and innovative initiative that would re-build confidence in print media. But the fact The New Day was not a news-led product, but was instead feature driven, made it unique but possibly not enthralling enough as a proposition. Could the real truth be that The New Day was simply too mediocre for a print outlet launching in todays diverse media landscape?
So as the sunsets on The New Day what does this tell us about the future of print?
The New Day has seemingly proved that survival won’t come from print innovations but from gripping on hard to the status quo, cutting costs and looking after the well-managed decline of the UKs print news industry. Death by a thousand papercuts seems inescapable.
