Collapse shows difficulty of launching new newspaper

With a life-span of less than four months, the Dublin Evening - or Dublin Daily, as it was previously known - fared little better…

With a life-span of less than four months, the Dublin Evening - or Dublin Daily, as it was previously known - fared little better than its most recent precursor in the market, writes Joe Humphreys.

The Evening News was launched in May 1996 to fill a gap left by the Evening Press, which had collapsed the previous year. But it closed in early September 1996.

The News, a colour tabloid which had a staff of 60 and unlike the Dublin Evening presented itself as a national paper, was dogged by production and deadline problems as well as a lack of investors. It had sought a daily circulation of 40,000 but was selling less than half that at its closure.

Other attempts to capture the Dublin market have suffered a similar fate with the Leader - a weekly precursor to the Evening News - and the Dublin Echo, an spin-off of the Tallaght Echo, failing to make an impact in separate launches in recent years.

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The most determined effort to establish a regional newspaper for Dublin came more than a decade ago from Tribune Newspapers, which owns the Sunday Tribune. Its Dublin Tribune, launched as a freesheet in 1990, achieved a circulation of 160,000 but cost the company well over £1 million (€1.27 million) due to a shortfall in advertising. The publication closed in May 1992, leaving Tribune Newspapers in a serious financial state.

The collapse of the Dublin Evening underlines how hard it is to enter the evening newspaper market. The circulation of evening newspapers has been falling over the past decade, not only in Ireland but overseas.

The difficulty in launching a new title was more recently highlighted by Stars on Sunday, which closed after just a few weeks' publication in 2002.

Backed by publishers John Ryan of VIP, Melanie Morris of Dside and GI magazines, and Ashville Media, the colour tabloid failed to reach its circulation target of 50,000 copies a week.

The exception in the sector has been Ireland on Sunday, launched in September 1997 as an offshoot of Ireland's first sports newspaper, the Title, which it incorporated.

The Sunday newspaper has since been bought by Associated Newspapers, which publishes the Daily Mail in the UK, and boasts an increase in circulation from 43,000 to 166,000 last year.