[3] It was first published for free on Monday 29 February 2016, as the first new British national daily newspaper since the i in 2010, and the first new standalone title since The Independent in 1986.

Trinity Mirror chief executive Simon Fox said the paper filled "a gap in the market for a daily newspaper designed to co-exist in a digital age".

[4] Fox said that the number of people buying a daily newspaper had been declining by 500,000 a year, and those readers could be tempted to consider The New Day.

[8] Phillips eschewed traditional newspaper structures, saying the team had "started with a blank piece of paper" and a typical reader should be able to digest the entire content within 30 minutes.

[8] A press release issued by the publishers of The New Day stated that the paper would "...report with an upbeat, optimistic approach and will be politically neutral".

Fox believed that a separate Scottish staff would have been needed for it to be sold across Scotland, because it would have been dismissed as "too English" due to the differences in government policy between the two countries.

On a practical basis, it was published early in the evening because it shared presses with the Daily Mirror, thus it missed out on late-night breaking news such as Leicester City's shock win of the Premier League.