According to reports in the UK Beecher, a co-owner of news and gossip website crikey.com.au and a former editor of The Sydney Morning Herald, said he was working with The World founder Stephen Glover but did not have a hands-on role in the project and had not yet invested any money in it. Beecher last year sold his Text Media to Fairfax for $65m.

Once the British newspaper started, an Australian edition would eventually be a possibility, he said. “The concept of the low-cost, high-quality newspaper model has potential. [But] I think we need to see a British edition first.”

The last national daily newspaper to be launched in Australia was News Limited broadsheet The Australian, which Rupert Murdoch started in 1964. The other national title is Fairfax business tabloid The Australian Financial Review, which started as a weekly in 1951 and went daily in 1963.

Glover, who writes a column for The Daily Mail and co-founded The Independent in 1986, has been working on launching the highbrow tabloid since the beginning of 2004.

According to the British Press Gazette, The World would be a niche upmarket publication that would concentrate on politics, foreign affairs, books, business and economics, shun lightweight content and carry little sport. It would have a journalistic staff of fewer than 100 people and a circulation goal of about 100,000 copies. The project reportedly has seed $47m and is modelled on French newspaper Le Monde.

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