By Dominic Ponsford
The Belfast Telegraph gave its morning edition away for free on
Monday in a move timed to coincide with the launch of the city’s
morning paper Daily View.
The Telegraph, an established broadsheet evening title, brought
forward plans to launch a tabloid-sized morning edition so that it came
out 10 days before Monday’s launch of Daily View.
The latest morning paper for Belfast is described as a cross-community lifestyle concentrated paper.
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It
competes with new Belfast-based pro-united Ireland paper Daily Ireland,
which was launched in February, as well as two other morning titles in
the city – the Nationalist Irish News and the Loyalist News Letter.
The
Daily View is published by News Letter owner Local Press Ltd. It
launched with a print run of 30,000 and editor Greg Harkin is hopeful
the sale will settle down to around 25,000.
Harkin said: “We are
really pleased with it and getting reports of sell-outs in places where
we didn’t expect to have sell-outs.”
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The death of the Pope dominated the front page, with a quote from John Paul II’s 1979 visit to Ireland.
The
72-page launch edition included a lifestyle supplement, an interview
with Eamon Holmes, an exclusive interview with Hilary Clinton and a
social diary as well as sections on make-up, diet, fitness, a legal
column, puzzles, cartoons and an agony aunt.
“People have been ringing up already to say they like the paper,” said Harkin.
“There
are four other newspapers coming out in Belfast in the mornings but
they are Northern Irish newspapers and this is a Belfast newspaper.
“That’s where we are concentrating our news and features.”
Ed
Curran, editor of the Belfast Telegraph, admitted that he cut short a
holiday to bring forward the launch of the Belfast Telegraph’s morning
edition by a month to beat Daily View to the newsstands.
Sales of the morning edition are understood to be around 10,000.
This makes for an overall year-on-year rise in the Telegraph’s 94,540 circulation.
Curran said: “We are absolutely delighted with the newspaper itself.
“We
are doing something that may be unique in Europe – producing a compact
morning edition but keeping the broadsheet shape in the afternoon.”
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