Last Today Promotes Sun To Readers

The last edition of News International’s Today newspaper reads “Goodbye. It’s been great to know you”. High costs and rising losses have been blamed by publisher News International for its decision to close the title. Les Hinton, executive chairman of News International said “with a modest circulation, insufficient growth and rapidly rising costs we have no alternative.” Newsprint costs are up by 50% on last year.

News International’s decision to close the paper comes despite an offer to buy the paper from Mohamed Fayed, owner of Harrods. News International said it did not believe there was a “credible” purchaser for the paper.

The last edition of Today comes complete with a pull-out mini-Sun, with the headline, “Start each new today with the Sun”. The pull-out includes vouchers for a free copy of the Sun tomorrow, and for the Sun for the next two weeks for just 10p. The mini-Sun even contains a statement from Tony Blair; “Journalism suffered a blow yesterday with the closure of Today. It was responsible for some great campaigns and had continually exposed the betrayals and the blundering of the Tory Government”.

The closure of Today means News International now has no paper with a left-of- centre political stance; Today’s editorial from the Sun implies the Sun is stepping into those shoes. The Sun itself claims it is “independent of the political parties”, then highlights how it has shifted to become a critic of the Government. “Tony Blair has declared publicly that he believes his party gets fairer treatment from The Sun than from the Guardian.”

Today launched in March 1986; its initial circulation was around the 300,000 mark but it had managed to double this to over the 600,000 mark; its highest circulation came in August 1994, when it reached 656,000, but even in January of this year its circulation figure was above the 600,000 mark. Its latest circulation figure, for October this year was 576,437, a decrease of nearly 8% year on year.

When Today launched into the middle market in 1986, the Daily Express and the Daily Mail both had circulations of around 1.8 million. Today when it launched took an immediate market share of around 8%, seemingly at the expense of the Express; this market share grew to a high of 16.5% for July to December 1994.