Newsday to wind up operations after 32 years

News­day, one of the coun­try’s three dai­ly news­pa­pers, is set to close.

A pe­ti­tion to wind up Dai­ly News Lim­it­ed was filed on De­cem­ber 31, 2025, and is pub­lished in the dai­ly news­pa­pers to­day.

Af­ter 32 years in the busi­ness, Guardian Me­dia un­der­stands that the com­pa­ny has been in dire straits since 2024 and sought dif­fer­ent av­enues to keep it afloat through­out 2025.

How­ev­er, with few­er cus­tomers pur­chas­ing phys­i­cal copies of the news­pa­pers and the dra­mat­ic drop in ad­ver­tis­ing rev­enue, the com­pa­ny could not sus­tain op­er­a­tions.

In a sto­ry pub­lished on News­day’s web­site yes­ter­day, its man­ag­ing di­rec­tor, Grant Tay­lor, said when News­day’s price in­creased by $1—from $2 to $3—a few years ago, 40 per cent of the read­er­ship said, “No, thank you.”

“A news­pa­per en­tails hun­dreds of peo­ple work­ing every day of the year, and work­ing around the clock, to keep the pub­lic in­formed—but $3 is too much to ask for that ser­vice. Ad­ver­tis­ing rev­enue has al­so de­creased sig­nif­i­cant­ly over the last decade. Ad­ver­tis­ing in all me­dia is a frac­tion of what it was then, but for print me­dia, that drop has been most se­vere. Print ad­ver­tis­ing has fall­en by 75 per cent. In the con­text of the sig­nif­i­cant in­crease in costs, this is the most im­pact­ful el­e­ment of the per­fect storm that has been brew­ing over the last decade,” he said.

Guardian Me­dia un­der­stands at least 30 mem­bers of the ed­i­to­r­i­al team will be af­fect­ed by the de­ci­sion to wind down op­er­a­tions.

The first hear­ing is set for Jan­u­ary 19.

Tay­lor said the com­pa­ny faced a “per­fect storm of chal­lenges” that has led to where it was now—clo­sure.

“News­day is no dif­fer­ent in most re­spects from the oth­er play­ers in the mar­ket; this is an in­dus­try un­der se­vere pres­sure. But one cru­cial dif­fer­ence is that, as a stand-alone en­ti­ty which is not part of a me­dia con­glom­er­ate, there is nowhere for News­day to hide the year-on-year loss­es all the lo­cal dai­ly news­pa­pers are suf­fer­ing.

“Whilst the scourge of COVID is cer­tain­ly a fac­tor—as the coun­try shut down more than once, and with it, ad­ver­tis­ing sales fell off dra­mat­i­cal­ly—that was by no means the on­ly nail in the cof­fin.

“The el­e­ments of this per­fect storm are as var­ied as they are dam­ag­ing, with no sin­gle fac­tor ex­clu­sive­ly to blame. This is al­so not a ‘this just sud­den­ly hap­pened’ sce­nario, but rather, a sym­pho­ny of events play­ing out over a decade,” he said in a state­ment pub­lished last night.

Tay­lor said the com­pa­ny was im­pact­ed by the high cost of raw ma­te­ri­als, ma­chin­ery and its main­te­nance.

“The world has al­so changed, and T&T is no dif­fer­ent. The val­ue placed on tra­di­tion­al me­dia has di­min­ished and the po­lit­i­cal cam­paign to dis­cred­it them for ne­far­i­ous rea­sons has ramped up.

“We en­cour­age the peo­ple of TT to con­tin­ue to sup­port our me­dia col­leagues and jour­nal­ists in gen­er­al. The me­dia are one of the most im­por­tant el­e­ments in any democ­ra­cy, and it is a telling sign of a democ­ra­cy it­self un­der threat when the me­dia are un­der threat.”

News­day was es­tab­lished in 1993 by a group of jour­nal­ists led by Therese Mills.