Trinity Mirror gives New Day nine-month deadline for success

As Britain’s newest daily newspaper hit the shelves its boss warned that it had only nine months to prove itself profitable or face closure.

Simon Fox, chief executive of Trinity Mirror, said of New Day, the new daily paper from the Mirror stable: “We are realistic and if it is not profitable going into 2017 we won’t carry on. But it has very low extra costs. Aside from about 25 new writers and some marketing costs we are using resources we already have and in the case of things such as printing — because it has very early deadlines — we are using what is effectively down time.”

New Day is edited by Alison Phillips, who formerly headed the Sunday Mirror and Fox said that the new paper reflected “confidence” in print media.

However, the Daily Mirror’s circulation dropped 9.2% last year and revenues from Trinity’s print business were down 9.5%.

Digital revenues rose by 21.9% and Fox said that the group’s UK online audience was “now on a level with Mail Online in this country”.

Trinity became the country’s biggest local newspaper publisher with the £187 million purchase of Local World. Assuming it had been owned for a whole year, Trinity’s total revenues are down 9% since the start of this year.

Taking out £29 million of hacking costs and other one-offs, Trinity’s operating profit rose 3.9% to £109.6 million mainly through taking out another £20 million of costs.