Trinity Mirror group

Overview

This profile covers the UK Trinity Mirror group, which embraces UK regional papers and publications salvaged from the wreck of the Maxwell empire.

The group

Trinity Mirror claims to be the largest newspaper publisher in the UK and the second largest in Europe, with more than 14,000 staff and operations in Ireland and the UK. Its portfolio embraces a handful of national newspapers, over 240 regional newspapers, around 50 magazines, national exhibitions and events.

The group claims that around half the UK population reads one of its titles (which range - perhaps not very far - from the Daily Mirror to Quids In and the West Bridgford Wot's Wot). As of 2001 it included three of the top 10 regional evening newspapers and three of the top six regional Sunday newspapers.

The group dates from the 1999 merger of Trinity (local/regional newspapers) and the Mirror group - centred around the tabloid Mirror - which had formed the heart of the former Maxwell group (described in a separate profile).

In December 2003 it announced the sale of its Irish regional newspapers (seven titles, including the Belfast News Letter - sometimes claimed as the world's oldest continuously-published English language newspaper - Donegal Democrat and Derry Journal) to venture capital group 3i for £46.3 million.

The Racing Post was launched in 1986 by racehorse owner Sheikh Mohamed Maktoum as a rival to the Mirror Group's Sporting Life. The He licensed publication of the title in 1997; Mirror Group folded the Sporting Life in 1999, leaving the Post in a lucrative position as the dominant UK provider of daily horseracing coverage.

Studies

There has been no major academic study of Trinity Mirror, in contrast to writing about the Mirror and associated personalities.

For the Mirror see Charles Wintour's The Rise & Fall of Fleet Street (London: Hutchinson 1989), Northcliffe's Legacy: Aspects of the British Popular Press 1896-1996 (New York: St Martins 2000) edited by Peter Catterall & Colin Seymour-Ure, The Mirror: A Political History (London: Hamilton 1966) by Maurice Edelman and The Market For Glory (London: Faber 1986) by Simon Jenkins.

Ruth Dudley Edwards' Newspapermen: Hugh Cudlipp, Cecil Harmsworth King & the Glory Days of Fleet Street (London: Secker & Warburg 2003) is an essential point of entry for memoirs such as Hugh Cudlipp's Walking in The Water (1976) and Cecil King's Strictly Personal (London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson 1969).