Trinity Mirror

History

Mirror Group Newspapers

Trinity Mirror’s history goes all the way back to 1903, with the foundation of the Daily Mirror by Alfred Harmsworth, the future Lord Rothermere, as a newspaper for gentlewomen. (Harmsworth’s name is more readily associated with the Daily Mail & General Trust these days.) Unsurprisingly given Harmsworth’s own political allegiances, the Mirror was initially a conservative newspaper and even dallied with fascism in the 1930s.

Under Harmsworth’s grandson, Cecil Harmsworth King, the Mirror Group (as the papers were informally known) became part of the International Publishing Corporation on its foundation in 1963. However, a boardroom coup in 1968 led to King being ousted and replaced by his deputy, Hugh Cudlipp. Cudlipp had no stomach for his new role and soon stepped down, IPC being taken over by Reed International in 1970.

In 1984 Mirror Group Newspapers was sold to Robert Maxwell’s Pergamon Holdings. A bout of cost-cutting and production changes ensued, together with the erosion of employees’ pensions. For most of the 1990s the Mirror Group (as the group was listed on the London Stock Exchange from 1991) was in crisis.

Trinity International Holdings plc

Trinity was set up in 1985 as a restructuring of the Liverpool Daily Post and Liverpool Echo‘s existing management company, Liverpool Daily Post & Echo Ltd, whose antecedents stretched back to 1904 when the Post merged with the Liverpool Mercury. The existing company’s trading activities – covering newspapers on both sides of the Atlantic – had outgrown its existing structures.

Merger

In 1999 Trinity and the Mirror Group merged to form Trinity Mirror, which immediately became the UK’s largest publisher and Europe’s largest in terms of the number of titles produced.

Recent developments

The company’s fluctuated in size since then, notably selling 25 titles from its Trinity Mirror Southern subsidiary to Northcliffe Media in 2007, and acquiring the Guardian Media Group‘s local newspaper publishers, MEN Media and Surrey & Berkshire Media, in February 2010.

In May 2012 Trinity Mirror announced that chief executive Sly Bailey would be stepping down at the end of the year after nearly 10 years at the helm, in the face of a potential sharehold revolt over her announced pay package. In the event, she left the following month, on 15 June.

Former Mirror Group chief executive David Montgomery launched a new regional media conglomerate, Local World, in November 2012, comprising the newspaper and website assets of Northcliffe Media (formerly part of the Daily Mail & General Trust) and Iliffe News & Media. Trinity Mirror is a 20 per cent shareholder in the business, which was Britain’s fourth largest regional media company at the time of its founding.

Divisions

Scotland

• Media Scotland

Wales

• Media Wales
• Trinity Mirror North Wales

England: North East

• ncjMedia
• Gazette Media Company

England: North West

• MEN Media
• Trinity Mirror Cheshire
• Trinity Mirror Merseyside

England: Yorkshire

• Trinity Mirror Huddersfield

England: West Midlands

• BPM Media
• Coventry Newspapers
• Trinity Mirror Midlands

England: South East/London

• Trinity Mirror Southern
• Surrey & Berkshire Media

Trinity Mirror’s newspapers listed alphabetically