Today was a national newspaper in the United Kingdom that was published between 1986 and 1995.[1]
History
Today, with the American newspaper USA Today as an inspiration, launched on Tuesday 4 March 1986, with the front-page headline, "Second Spy Inside GCHQ". At 18p (equivalent to 67p in 2023), it was a middle-market tabloid, a rival to the long-established Daily Mail and Daily Express. It pioneered computer photo-typesetting and full-colour offset printing at a time when national newspapers were still using Linotype machines, letterpress and could only reproduce photographs in black and white. The colour was initially crude, produced on equipment which had no facility for colour proofing, so the first view of the colour was on the finished product. However, it forced the conversion of all UK national newspapers to electronic production and colour printing. The newspaper's motto, hung in the newsroom, was "propa truth, not propaganda".
Alongside the daily newspaper, a Sunday edition was launched. Sunday Today suffered from having three editors in less than a year, and was closed early in 1987 as a cost-saving measure.[5]
Today ceased publication on 17 November 1995, the first long-running national newspaper title to close since the Daily Sketch in 1971. The last edition's headline was 'Goodbye, it's been great to know you". The editorial said: "Now we are forced into silence by the granite and unforgiving face of the balance sheet".
Richard Stott was editor when Today ceased publication. Other journalists at the close included Peter Prendergast (city editor), Anne Robinson (columnist), Barry Wigmore (US editor, based in New York), David McMaster (managing editor) and the MP Tony Banks (football correspondent).
In the immediate aftermath of the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing, the paper showed a fireman carrying the body of a young girl under the headline "In the name of Islam", however it was found that the bombing had been perpetrated by two anti-government white supremacists.[6]