The launch edition of the UK’s first new stand-alone national newspaper in three decades has rolled off the presses.
Monday’s first edition of The New Day features a front page with the headline “Stolen childhood” on a splash about the “plight of 40,000 infant carers”.
It pictures a young boy named “Aidan” and says: “He’s five and looks after his mum … but who is looking after him?”
It also features a comment piece written by Prime Minister David Cameron and another on the relationship between Cheryl Fernandez-Versini and One Direction’s Liam Payne.
Barry Rabbetts, the paper’s executive editor, tweeted an image of the front page, saying: “When you pick up @thenewdayuk tomorrow you’ll see it’s very different.”
He also said Monday’s launch edition would be free. It will then trial at 25p for two weeks and sell for 50p after that.
Publisher Trinity Mirror announced the paper’s launch on February 22 after it was announced The Independent and The Independent On Sunday newspapers would close next month and go digital-only.
The move comes despite a sharp decline in newspaper sales as readers switch to online websites.
Trinity Mirror said when it made the announcement that the newspaper “will cover important stories in a balanced way, without telling the reader what to think”, and stressed that it would be a stand-alone paper and “not a sister title” to The Daily Mirror.
Edited by Alison Phillips, The Mirror’s weekend editor, it will run to 40 pages and be available free from more than 40,000 retailers from launch.