The world's oldest daily newspaper - the Belfast-based News Letter - is getting a sister publication, it was announced today.
Owners, Local Press Ltd said the new morning compact, Daily View, would be launched on April 4th. It will be a five days a week, Monday to Friday paper and will be circulated in the Greater Belfast area where the population of 750,000 accounts for around half of the total population of Northern Ireland.
The group is also launching a new weekly paper based in Coleraine, Co Derry which will hit the streets in the same week.
The new morning paper will enter an increasingly crowded market. Daily Ireland, covering Northern Ireland and the border counties from a republican standpoint, was launched in February as was the evening Belfast Telegraph's Saturday morning compact edition which is widely expected to go six days a week soon.
The new papers compete with the existing local mornings - the News Letter, which covers the North from a unionist standpoint, the nationalist Irish News, the Dublin-based papers and the British nationals.
But Greg Harkin, who recently moved from editing the Northern Ireland edition of the Daily Mirror to edit the new paper, said he believed there was a market for what they were going to offer.
"Its a very crowded market but we believe, from our research, that there is room out there for a quality, mid market morning newspaper that reflects the city we are living in now not 30 years ago.
"Just go out in Belfast at night and feel the buzz. The times really are a changing." He said he was aiming to make the new paper lighter and more fun than the competition, while still tackling the serious issues facing society.
The newspaper group has recruited 21 journalists for the new paper.