Schwartz to launch a new weekend newspaper The Saturday Paper
The Monthly publisher Morry Schwartz has announced he will launch a new weekly newspaper called The Saturday Paper next year, to be edited by 25-year-old former Sydney Morning Herald journalist Erik Jensen.
The first issue will be published in the first quarter of 2014 and will follow the style of its sister publications, with focus on long-form journalism.
“This is something I have wanted to do since I first got into publishing 40 years ago. Now is the perfect time,” said Schwartz.
“I believe in quality journalism. I believe in print. While some in the industry have convinced themselves of terminal decline, I believe an audience exists for a new player to come in and do journalism better than anyone else. I am launching this newspaper because I know it will work.”
Its projected circulation at launch will be 80,000-100,000 across Sydney, Melbourne and Canberra.
“We have spent 18 months breaking newspapers apart and putting them back together and I think we have found a model where print journalism can be vital and be profitable,” Jensen told Mumbrella, adding they are already staffing up, with announcements on contributors to be made in the months to come.
He said the newspaper would have a mixture of news and long form adding the idea of taking over such a role at 25 is “not daunting it’s thrilling.”
“I started talking to Morry about this two years ago and pitch him the idea, it turned out this was something he had wanted to do and so on the basis of that we decided to do it,” he added.
CEO of The Monthly and The Saturday Paper, Rebecca Costello, said: “The Monthly has been recognised by the Australian Magazine Awards as one of the best magazines in Australia, and advertisers have been asking us to produce our quality content more often – to reach an audience that is not available anywhere else. The recent significant growth in revenue at the Monthly and themonthly.com.au confirms this and has put us in the perfect position to launch a new title.”
Nic Christensen
How can we get a copy in Queensland? I’m with Morry – I love the feel of a newspaper. It’s just not good enough reading papers online.
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