Alan Formby-Jackson

The Guardian reports that the Metro Herald, the daily Dublin newspaper created through the merger of Herald AM and Metro Ireland, launched today (Jan 7) as a morning freesheet.

The title is jointly owned by Associated Newspapers, the Daily Mail & General Trust subsidiary, the Irish Times and Independent News & Media. Sweden’s Metro International, which previously held about a 10% share in Metro Ireland, has sold its stake in the venture.

The merger of the two Dublin freesheets had been widely anticipated, with both titles believed to be making substantial losses, and was confirmed last summer.

The new-look Metro Herald will be hand-distributed from 7am to 9.30am on weekdays to target young professionals who commute in the Greater Dublin area. Distribution will be about 70,000 copies a day.

“This is a great opportunity for a strong, Metro Herald is result of merger of Herald AM and Metro Irelandwell funded free newspaper to prosper in Dublin,” said Steve Auckland, the managing director of Associated Newspapers’ free newspaper division. “As Metro Herald attracts a young, working audience through its unique distribution model, it will benefit advertisers in providing them with a key platform to reach these young urban consumers.”

Also, last month, the Associated Newspapers-owned www.metro.co.uk website was redesigned.

Ryan Battles, Digital Editor at the site said:

We have focused on improving navigation, channel and article templates and the site’s overall aesthetics which we believe is an improvement on the present offering and matches the expectations of our audience.

See what you think here.

This entry was posted on Thursday, January 7th, 2010 at 10:36 am and is filed under Newspapers. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.