New Day newspaper to close after just nine weeks

The New Day newspaper is to publish its last issue on Friday, nine weeks after it was launched by Trinity Mirror in a bid to win back readers who had "fallen out of love with newspapers".

The group, which also publishes the Daily Mirror, promised advertisers the paper would sell 200,000 copies a day, but was only able to muster a circulation of 30,000.

Staff were told of the closure yesterday. Editor Alison Phillips was said to be "distraught" when the news was announced, The Guardian reports.

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Stock in the company slumped to a three-year low on Wednesday and it is thought the decision will be announced in a stock market trading update this morning. According to "sources", New Day was losing £1m a year, says The Guardian.

"We have tried everything we could but sadly we just haven't reached the sales figures we need to make it work financially," said Phillips on Facebook.

She added: "The response over the 50 issues we have published has been extraordinary. I have never worked on a title with such engagement from readers.

"There clearly were many people who truly loved the idea of a different kind of newspaper which spoke to them. But the reality was we didn't have enough of them on a daily basis.

"To have not given this a go was to mean we were content to stand on the pavement and watch the decline of British national newspapers hurtle past us. But we weren't. And we still aren't.

The politically neutral paper, which was launched in February, was intended to appeal to "time-poor" readers. After an initial two million copies were distributed for free, it sold for 25p for the first couple of weeks before Trinity Mirror doubled the cover price to 50p.

Reacting to the news of New Day's closure, The Guardian's head of media, Jane Martinson, told the BBC: "This is a terrible time to launch a newspaper."

She added: "We have to welcome a brave and optimistic attempt to do something in this market. Was it ill-conceived though? I would say yes."