London: Trinity Mirror is to shut its experimental new national newspaper the New Day on Friday just two months after launch.
The publisher of the Daily Mirror launched the title, which aimed to target those who had “fallen out of love with newspapers”, at the end of February with a promotional print run of about 2m.
The title was launched with a £5m TV ad campaign that ran with the strapline “Seize the New Day”.
Trinity Mirror, which saw its share price slump to a three-year low on Wednesday, is expected to announce the closure of the title in a stock market trading update on Thursday morning.
Two sources said staff were informed of the closure on Wednesday. The last issue will hit stands on Friday.
Editor Alison Phillips, who was previously responsible for stablemates the Sunday Mirror and Sunday People, was said by those who attended the internal meeting to be distraught.
The publisher had aimed to hit paid sales of 200,000, and made promises to advertisers to sell ads at that rate of sales or offer money back, but instead saw its popularity immediately sink to about 30,000 copies per day.
Trinity Mirror positioned the launch of the title as a low-cost operation running on extra capacity at its printing presses – which also had contracts to print the Independent print titles.
Sources say the New Day was probably running at a loss of about £1m annually. A spokeswoman for Trinity Mirror declined to comment.
