Newsday to close after 32 years – files petition to wind-up

AFTER 32 years, Newsday has commenced legal proceedings to wind-up its business.

A public notice, to be published in all daily newspapers on January 10, states that a petition to wind-up Daily News Ltd, publishers of Newsday, was filed on December 31, 2025, and the first hearing is set for January 19.

The company's managing director, Grant Taylor, said in a statement on January 9, "A perfect storm of challenges has led to where we are now: closure."

Newsday was established in 1993 by a group of journalists led by Therese Mills and challenged the two other daily newspapers, Express and Guardian, eventually taking top spot during its peak.

"Newsday is no different in most respects from the other players in the market; this is an industry under severe pressure. But one crucial difference is that, as a stand-alone entity which is not part of a media conglomerate, there is nowhere for Newsday to hide the year-on-year losses all the local daily newspapers are suffering.

"Whilst the scourge of covid is certainly a factor – as the country shut down more than once, and with it, advertising sales fell off dramatically – that was by no means the only nail in the coffin.

"The elements of this perfect storm are as varied as they are damaging, with no single factor exclusively to blame. This is also not a 'this just suddenly happened' scenario, but rather, a symphony of events playing out over a decade."

Taylor acknowledged that the challenge was not unique to TT, as globally, traditional print media have been under pressure for some time.

Thousands of newspapers have closed worldwide. In the United States alone, more than 3,500 are estimated to have closed in the last 20 years, he said. "Some challenges have been causes of our demise; others have hastened it,” he said.

The cost of raw materials, and in particular paper, the largest expense, has also sky-rocketed in the last decade, he said.

The cost of machinery and of maintaining it have also increased significantly, as manufacturers of the main components have gone out of business owing to the industry’s contraction.

"The world has also changed, and TT is no different. The value placed on traditional media has diminished and the political campaign to discredit them for nefarious reasons has ramped up.

He said when Newsday’s price increased by $1 – from $2 to $3 – a few years ago, 40 per cent of the readership said, “No, thank you.” That $3 was less than the price of a doubles – but was still too high a price to pay, he added.

"A newspaper entails hundreds of people working every day of the year, and working around the clock, to keep the public informed – but $3 is too much to ask for that service. Advertising revenue has also decreased significantly over the last decade.

"Advertising in all media is a fraction of what it was then, but for print media, that drop has been most severe. Print advertising has fallen by 75 per cent. In the context of the significant increase in costs, this is the most impactful element of the perfect storm that has been brewing over the last decade.

"As we become another statistic in the casualties on the print media landscape, we remain proud of our legacy of unwavering independence in keeping the public informed. We are grateful to those who supported Newsday throughout, to longtime readers and those who discovered and came to appreciate the paper’s strengths more recently.

"We are grateful, too, to the dedicated staff of every department who worked every day and night for over two decades, determined that the paper must come out, in the interest of that readership.

We encourage the people of TT to continue to support our media colleagues and journalists in general. The media are one of the most important elements in any democracy, and it is a telling sign of a democracy itself under threat when the media are under threat."

Taylor said the industrial-relations climate has always been particularly challenging, from trying to get all interested parties on the same page to rulings that sometimes appeared to discount the financial reality of many companies to the detriment of the organisation and all employees.

"It would be remiss, however, not to mention that the courts seem to have changed their approach in more recent times. The cost, however, is in the millions and is a challenge for a small company."