UK national newspapers

*Trinity Mirror also publishes two popular tabloids in Scotland, Daily Record and Sunday Mail
**Most FT sales are overseas: 59,974 (128,216) is the UK figure
Source: ABC (www.abc.org.uk)

Associated Newspapers (Daily Mail)

i

Morning daily for commuters. Launched in 2010 as a sister paper to The Independent. Bought by DGMT in 2019 from JPI Media, having been previously controlled by Evening Standard owner Evgeny Lebedev.

Mail on Sunday

Sister to Daily Mail since 1982 (May 2), and the first new Sunday newpaper since the appearance 21 years before of The Sunday Telegraph. Launched with Bernard Shrimsley as editor but David English refused to allow the daily's contributors to write for it. In June, English was knighted; he ousted Shrimsley and brought in his writers in July an event known on the paper as 'The Knight of the Long Knives'. Within a year, the circulation had doubled to nudge 1.5m, partly thanks to the addition of a colour supplement for women, You, in October; Night & Day, for features and arts; and Financial Mail on Sunday. In 2006, a short-lived attempt was made to sell You in newsagents. The Night & Day supplement was relaunched in 2007 at a cost of £8m to attract more male readers an unusual move given that both the daily and Sunday papers have traditionally focused on women.

7Days

7Days is a free, English language daily published Sunday to Friday in Dubai and Abu Dhabi. DMGT owns 60% of Catchpole Communications, which produces the title. Some 75,000 copies are distributed.

ESI Media (Independent, Standard)

In February 2016, the company sold off its 'cheapsheet' 40p daily i to regional group Johnston Press and closed the print Independent, making most of the staff redundant and going online only. The company was formed in December 2008 by Alexander Lebedev, a former KGB agent turned banker, who owns a minority share in the Moscow paper Novaya Gazeta with Mikhail Gorbachev, former Soviet president. Lebedev took over the Evening Standard from Associated on 21 January 2009 after months courting its owner Lord Rothermere. He paid £1 for a 75.1% stake at a time when the paper could have been losing as much as £20 million a year. It was the first time DMGT had sold a paper. Questions were asked about the security implications of a former spy, who had been based in London for several years, controlling a British paper (there is a long history of journalists such as James Bond author and Sunday Times writer Ian Fleming feeding intelligence to security services).

Lebedev told the Guardian: ‘As far as I'm concerned this [buying the Standard] has nothing to do with making money. There are lots of other ways. This is a good way to waste money’ (‘Welcome, comrade proprietor’, 15 January 2009, p1). The FT reported that just one director – 28-year-old Evgeny, Lebedev’s son, boyfriend of actress Joely Richardson and owner of Sake No Hana restaurant, was listed as a director for Evening Press Ltd. The company was registered in December 2008 with a share capital of £40 million ‘quite a lot for a shell company’ (‘Lebedev junior's Evening Press’, 20 Jan 2009, p18).

In its first year of trading, Evening Press lost £28.3m.

When The Independent was launched in 1986, it was controlled by a consortium of backers and so was 'independent' of any proprietor. However, poor sales as a result of lack of investment and cutting staff saw it fall into the hands of the Mirror Group and later the Irish newspaper group controlled by Tony O'Reilly. It was the first modern broadsheet to go tabloid, in 2003. In 2010, the Lebedevs bought the Independent and its sister Sunday. In 2016, both became digital-only.

In March 2010, London Evening Standard owners Alexander and Evgeny Lebedev paid a nominal £1 for the loss-making Independent and Independent on Sunday (in fact, Independent News & Media paid the Lebedevs $9.25 million to take over the titles).

Original offices were in London's City Road overlooking Bunhill Fields cemetery (burial place of many famous 17th and 18th century writers), hence the title of Bunhill's Notes in Sunday business pages. The 'Weasel' column in the Saturday magazine comes from the nursery rhyme:

'Up and down the City Road,
In and out the Eagle,
That's the way the money goes,
Pop goes the weasel'.

Independent on Sunday

Sister paper to the Independent from January 28, 1990, to 2016. Nick-named 'Sindy'. Had 250,000 sales

Preview of Maxwell's London Daily News in 1987

Rupert Murdoch-controlled News International with deeper pockets was reported as planning to launch a free evening in 1999 and The London Paper finally appeared in August 2006. However, Associated had got in first with Metro. Using the same tactics as against Maxwell, DMGT launched London Lite to protect the Standard and Metro. However, the battle took a toll on the Standard's sales and DMGT sold control to Russian businessman Alexander Lebedev. He took a 75.1% stake in 2009.

i (the essential daily briefing from the Independent)

Sold to Johnston Press in February 2016. The 20p i newspaper was launched in October 2000 by the Independent for readers who wanted a concise, better quality daily than the free papers but did not want to pay the price. In May 2011, a 30p Saturday edition was launched. By 2011, the i was selling 221,715 copies a day. It was run by Stefano Hatfield, formerly at News International. In the 23 January 2011 issue, Hatfield introduced a new Monday cartoonist, Ben Jennings, who had won the 2011 political cartoon of the year award for a Gadaffi cartoon in the Guardian in August, though still at university. Hatfield also added a daily Codeword to the puzzle page, saying 'This is something readers have asked for since i launched particularly many of you transferring to us from a rival paper that contains one.' (The Daily Mail carried such a puzzle on its centre spread coffee break page.)

Has a history of dabbling in magazines. Launched a UK version of Wired in 1995, though this closed after a couple of years.

News UK (Sun, Times, Sunday Times)

Extensive media interests in the US and Australia. Murdoch changed from being an Australian to take up US citizenship so he could control the Fox TV network. Murdoch's family has succeeded in retaining control of News Corp, and in the 1990s concentrated on television assets in the US and UK. In 2004, Murdoch announced that the group would switch its emphasis online, buying Intermix Media, for $580m in 2005 which gave it control of MySpace.com social network.

Having arrived in the UK from Australia to beat Robert Maxwell in buying the News of the World in 1968, Murdoch bought the Sun from IPC. He relaunched this in November 1969 with a 'sex and sensation' formula and topless Page 3 girls, which made household names of models such as Samantha Fox. He then bought the Times and Sunday Times and broke the Fleet Street unions by moving to Wapping in 1986.

The paper had a free distribution of about 500,000 copies in July 2009. As a result, Associated sold the loss-making Standard. However, the Murdoch paper fell victim to the recession and announced in August 2009 that the final issue of the London Paper was likely to be on Friday 18 September

Launched on 1 January 1785 by John Walter I as the Daily Universal Register. Renamed on 1 January 1788. Established its reputation for honesty under John Walter II from 1803, who installed steam printing in 1814, and possibly the greatest editor of the century, John Barnes (1817-41). By 1823 it was 'the greatest engine of temporary opinion in the world…' and the paper of record for Britain, then the most powerful country in the world following the defeat of Napoleon, despite the loss of the Americas. US president Abraham Lincoln said it was 'the most powerful thing in the world except, perhaps, the Mississippi river'.

Ran classified advertising for births, marriages and deaths on its front page until May 3, 1966 and on the back page until 1982. The Times was closed down due to an industrial dispute from December 1, 1978 until November, 12 1979. On Friday 13, 1981 it became a sister paper to the Sun, as part of Rupert Murdoch's News International. In 1986, Murdoch broke the print unions by moving to 'Fortress' Wapping, though the damage done to the paper's quality and reputation opened the door for the Independent. Led price war from 1993 when it cut the cover price from 45p to 30p (and 10p on Monday). This raised sales at the expense of the Independent, Telegraph and Express. One weapon in this battle was the launch of The Times magazine as a Saturday colour supplement on 13 March 1993.

The broadsheet Times newspaper started a compact (tabloid) edition in November 2003. A year later, the Times dropped the broadsheet.

Pearson plc (sold FT to Nikkei)

From being a diverse group of quality companies (including Château Latour, Warwick Castle, Madame Tussauds and oil interests), Pearson concentrated on publishing and TV in the 1990s. In February 1999, it merged Addison-Wesley Longman and Financial Times Management books imprints under one Pearson Education banner. This followed the purchase of educational division of Simon and Schuster from US entertainment group Viacom for $4.6 billion in 1998, making Pearson the largest educational publisher in the world. This included Prentice Hall in the UK. Sold local newspaper group Westminster Press in 1997 and consumer magazines, including Future Publishing in April 1998 (for £142m).

Then, it sold the TV division, which included Thames, Grundy (makers of Neighbours) and Pearson TV (Men Behaving Badly) to RTL in mid-1990s, along with rights to games show formats such as Blankety Blank, Blockbuster, Family Fortunes and The Price is Right.

US-born chief executive, Marjorie Scardino, was the first female head of a top 100 UK company. She revealed after an RSA lecture (RSA Journal, April 1999) that the question she was most frequently asked was whether the company would relocate to the USA. By 2005, structured as three divisions: Financial Times Group, Penguin books and Pearson Education. 2012 marked her 15th year as head of the group. She was replaced by John Fallon who oversaw a halving of the share pricee, with a particular drop not long before and then again after the sale of the FT. He, in turn, stepped down in early 2020

One of the first daily newspapers to exploit the potential of the Saturday paper. FT Weekend includes the monthly How To Spend It, which is a tabloid-sized glossy, and weekly FT Magazine.

Telegraph Media Group

Sir David and Sir Frederick Barclay's Press Holdings Ltd bought the Telegraph group in 2004 from Hollinger International after main shareholder Conrad Black became embroiled in financial scandal (and was jailed in the US). The Barclay brothers were property developed who moved into the media world by buying the European in November 1991 after the death of disgraced tycoon Robert Maxwell. The weekly had gone through several formats, from broadsheet newspaper to tabloid newsprint magazine before being closed in 1998. Then The Business (was Sunday Business) in September 1997 and The Scotsman. Former Sunday Times editor Andrew Neil has been editor-in-chief since 1996, and publisher since 1999. Press Holdings sold the Scotsman papers to Johnston Press in 2005 for £160m. It backed down from buying the Glasgow-based Herald newspapers in 2003 after protests from Scottish establishment. In 2006, relaunched the weekly Sunday newspaper Business as a magazine, but this was closed in 2008 (in favour of launching a business magazine off the back of The Spectator).

Lord Black and Hollinger had gained control of the Telegraph in 1986, after the previous owners, the Berry family, faced financial problems. However, Black himself faced difficulties from the end of 2003. These included lawsuits by angry shareholders in Hollinger International; inquiries by the US financial watchdog, the Securities and Exchange Commission; and an investigation by an independent committee at Hollinger International itself.

Reach (was Trinity Mirror)

Sporting Life was commonly known as the Queen Mother's favourite newspaper. Jamie Reid in a commentary on its closure (Guardian, 5/3/99, p23) said: 'Whenever a British film in the Forties and Fifties wanted to signify that some George Cole or Terry Thomas character was a touch wide, they would show them smoking a Players Navy Cut and reading the Sporting Life'. According to research quoted by Roy Greenslade (Guardian Media, 8/3/99, p4), a daily sporting paper might achieve of 220,000 copies a day (plus or minus 40,000). This was based on a cover price of 40p with a weekday pagination of 48 and 80 pages on a Sunday. However, the marketing bill would have been £10 million in the first year and Mirror group was in poor financial shape following the departure of chief executive David Montgomery a month before and a bidding war which had broken out for the group between regional newspaper groups Trinity and Regional Independent Media.

Sporting Life was commonly known as the Queen Mother's favourite newspaper. Jamie Reid in a commentary on its closure (Guardian, 5/3/99, p23) said: 'Whenever a British film in the Forties and Fifties wanted to signify that some George Cole or Terry Thomas character was a touch wide, they would show them smoking a Players Navy Cut and reading the Sporting Life'. According to research quoted by Roy Greenslade (Guardian Media, 8/3/99, p4), a daily sporting paper might achieve of 220,000 copies a day (plus or minus 40,000). This was based on a cover price of 40p with a weekday pagination of 48 and 80 pages on a Sunday. However, the marketing bill would have been £10 million in the first year and Mirror group was in poor financial shape following the departure of chief executive David Montgomery a month before and a bidding war which had broken out for the group between regional newspaper groups Trinity and Regional Independent Media.