A new paper is born

So Martin Newland’s new paper has come out today.

The National. Launched out of Abu Dhabi. A classy broadsheet launched, as Frank Kane explains in today’s Guardian, by “the richest emirate of the UAE, with some $900bn of oil cash sitting in the bank, to steal the thunder of its blingier neighbour, Dubai.” It comes in four sections: news, business, sport and life & arts.

The paper is designed by Lucy LaCava of Montreal who was a key figure behind Conrad Black’s Canadian paper The National Post on which Martin was Managing Editor, before he took over as Editor of The Telegraph.

It looks a bit like the Guardian before its most recent redesign. Very clean and confident. Sans headlines.

And it has some familiar LaCava touches - briefs at the top of the page for example (see below for some pages).

We’ll do a more detailed critique after it has been going for a while.

But for now we should simply celebrate. It is pretty good to get a new paper out these days.

Many congratulations to Martin and best wishes from us.

Add comment April 21st, 2008