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May 10, 2006updated 22 Nov 2022 7:13pm

Emap launches news weekly for supermums

By Press Gazette

Emap is betting £12 million next week on First – a weekly magazine
said to be inspired by female friendly news such as GMTV and aimed at
30-something "supermums".

As part of the £12m start up budget,
600,000 sample copies are to be given away at mainline stations,
supermarkets, direct mail, through adverts in regional press and via an
interactive TV promotion.

The title opens with picture led news
"influenced by the issues that affect women and their families"
according to editor Julian Linley. A rota of columnists include
comedian Jackie Clune and journalist Miranda Sawyer, both recent
mothers themselves. Content is specific to busy mums who "live their
lives in fast forward" said Linley, with seven day weather forecasts,
TV listings and easily digestible news stories.

GMTV's Penny
Smith will also write for the publication and the ITV morning show has
been the cited as the biggest influence on the launch, Emap
Entertainment's fifth in five years.

Linley said: "GMTV is
perhaps the closest media thing to it – in actual fact it was round the
time of the tsunami when we started thinking about the idea and it was
the image of the waves that made me think I want to see this in a
magazine, a newspaper won't reproduce this image well enough for me,
but on TV it was happening so fast you wanted to stop it and feel what
it meant to that person right there."

The launch team includes
former tabloid newspaper staff, to help fulfil a more newsy brief as
first employed by Emap on its celebrity gossip weekly Closer. Associate
editor for news, Maggie O'Riordan has been poached from her executive
feature writer post on the Sunday Mirror; and associate editor for
features, Caroline Jones is a former Daily Mirror women's editor.

Emap
Entertainment – the company's celebrity and women's weekly arm – hopes
to reach a circulation of between 150,000 and 200,000 within the
magazine's first year.

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