LiverpoolWorld
LiverpoolWorld was a digital-only city news website serving Liverpool and Merseyside, published by National World and, following the publisher's takeover and rebranding, by Iconic Media. It published Liverpool news, sport, events and community stories from its unusual web address, liverpoolworld.uk, and it was one of the first three titles launched under National World's "World" branding in the summer of 2021, alongside Glasgow World and Manchester World. LiverpoolWorld was created in a city where its publisher owned no newspaper, as a challenger to the established titles already serving Merseyside. The site operated for almost five years before it was closed in 2026 as part of a restructure by Iconic Media, the successor company to National World, which also closed the London World and Bristol World websites.
Launch in the summer of 2021
LiverpoolWorld went live in 2021 as part of a slate of eight city websites planned by JPIMedia, the publishing group that National World had bought at the turn of that year. Glasgow, Manchester and Liverpool were the first three to launch, with further brands planned for Newcastle, London, Birmingham, Bristol and Wales, and the expansion was associated with the creation of 45 jobs. The new teams were supported by eight television video journalists working in partnership with Local TV Ltd. The launches built on the debut earlier that year of nationalworld.com, the publisher's national news website, which had been launched in March 2021 following the acquisition.
The strategy behind the launches was set out by National World executive chairman David Montgomery, who argued that the company had the talent and resources to operate as a truly national network of local news brands, and that JPIMedia was throwing off its geographical limitations to enter major communities it regarded as underserved in serious local journalism. Liverpool fitted that description from the publisher's point of view: a major metropolitan centre with a strong civic identity, served by a dominant rival publisher, where National World had no print presence of its own.
The publisher behind the site
National World was founded and listed on the London Stock Exchange in September 2019 as a media takeover vehicle set up by the veteran newspaper executive David Montgomery. On 2 January 2021 it completed the acquisition of JPIMedia for £10.2 million. JPIMedia had been formed in November 2018 to take charge of Johnston Press after the 251-year-old publisher was briefly placed in administration, and it operated more than 100 newspapers and websites around the United Kingdom, including The Scotsman, the Yorkshire Post and Belfast's News Letter. In April 2022 JPIMedia Publishing was rebranded as National World Publishing. In May 2025 Media Concierge, led by Malcolm Denmark, acquired National World for £65.1 million, the company was delisted, and the publisher was subsequently rebranded as Iconic Media — the company that would eventually decide LiverpoolWorld's fate.
Dominic Raynor and the launch team
LiverpoolWorld's founding editor was Dominic Raynor, a Merseyside native who had spent 14 years as a sports journalist in London before returning home in 2014, working for Liverpool Football Club and then freelance. In his own account of his career, Raynor described starting in sport with ESPN in London in 2000, moving to BBC Sport in Manchester in 2014 and then to Liverpool FC for the start of Jürgen Klopp's reign in 2015, and covering events including FIFA World Cups, Champions League finals, Olympic Games and Commonwealth Games during more than two decades in sports journalism. He joined National World in July 2021 to take on the LiverpoolWorld editorship as a move from sport into news and features, and he remained identified with the title as its editor in professional listings for the rest of its life.
The launch team reflected Raynor's football background and the importance the publisher placed on sport in Liverpool. Football writer Will Rooney, another Merseyside native, joined from JPIMedia's Portsmouth daily The News, and broadcast journalist Emily Bonner was also part of the team. Raynor emphasised that the team all lived in Merseyside and understood the culture of the city — a point the World titles made repeatedly across the network, presenting local residence and local knowledge as their answer to the charge that a publisher headquartered elsewhere could not speak for the city.
The editorial promise
In his welcome editorial at launch, Raynor set out what LiverpoolWorld intended to be: a fresh perspective for a proud city, celebrating Liverpool while asking challenging questions on the big issues that mattered to its people. The site aimed to start fresh and interesting conversations about city life, and to act as a passionate champion for the region without shying away from scrutiny. That formula — civic pride combined with a challenger stance towards the city's institutions — was the standard World model, applied in Liverpool to a city with a particularly strong sense of its own identity and a long tradition of scepticism towards outside media.
In practice, Raynor's own writing for the site ranged widely beyond sport. His published work and author biography recorded local issues and city heroes, breaking news, national headline stories with a Liverpool dimension, human interest stories, food and travel writing, hidden gems and places to eat, walks around Merseyside and travel from Liverpool's airport. Features such as an illustrated history of Lime Street, published in January 2025, illustrated the site's interest in the city's heritage and photography, while airport route news showed its attention to the practical interests of readers who travelled.
News and community coverage
News coverage formed the core of LiverpoolWorld's daily output: council and public services, crime and courts, health, education, transport and the property market all featured on the site, alongside community stories from across the city and the wider Merseyside area. Professional profiling of the title during its life identified its local news focus, with crime and property among its prominent subjects, and its emphasis on breaking and evolving stories. As a digital-only title it published continuously rather than to a print deadline, and it distributed its journalism through search, social media and the World network's shared platforms, with stories also appearing on national aggregators and sister titles across the group.
Sport in a football city
Sport was never a secondary concern for LiverpoolWorld. Liverpool is one of England's great football cities, home to Liverpool FC and Everton, and a site edited by a man who had worked for Liverpool FC and covered World Cups and Champions League finals was well placed to treat football as a lead subject. The site covered both of the city's clubs, transfer news, match coverage and the wider sporting life of Merseyside, and football content written for LiverpoolWorld circulated across National World's network of club news services and sister titles. Raynor himself described discovering, after his move into news, a love of food and travel writing and of shaping the LiverpoolWorld platforms to celebrate what the city had to offer — a summary that captured the site's blend of hard sports coverage with lifestyle content.
Competition on Merseyside
LiverpoolWorld was launched in direct editorial competition with established Reach plc titles in the city — above all the Liverpool Echo, the city's dominant newspaper brand — as were its sister World sites in Glasgow and Manchester against Reach titles in those cities. Glasgow World also faced Newsquest's Glasgow Times, but on Merseyside the contest was principally with Reach's print and digital operation and with the BBC's regional services. The World titles' proposition to readers was choice: National World argued that monopolies in towns and cities were bad for local journalism, and it positioned LiverpoolWorld as an alternative voice rather than a replacement for the Echo. Whether readers needed a second city-wide digital title was the commercial question that hung over the site throughout its life, and one that its eventual closure answered in the publisher's terms.
Life within the Cities structure
Within National World, LiverpoolWorld belonged to the City World structure that grouped the publisher's metropolitan titles. In the February 2023 restructure, publishing editor roles were created across the cities portfolio, and Nicola Adam, editor of the Blackpool Gazette and the Lancashire Post, added Liverpool, Manchester and Yorkshire to her North West remit. Established daily titles were drawn into the same structure over time, and the cities operation worked to shared campaigns, including the publisher's We Love Our Cities campaign celebrating the individual identities of the places it covered. LiverpoolWorld's journalists also contributed to group-wide sports operations: as late as its final restructure, the publisher's sports audience team was responsible for sport across 11 websites, including Liverpool World, Manchester World, Glasgow World and Newcastle World.
Review, closure and the end of the site
The takeover of National World by Media Concierge in May 2025 changed the context in which LiverpoolWorld operated. The publisher, rebranded as Iconic Media, announced a wide-ranging restructure in February 2026 that moved back towards community-focused journalism, with new offices opened, named editors appointed for every title, and journalists in central teams returned to local newsrooms. Seventeen journalists across the group were placed at risk of redundancy, although the changes envisaged an eventual net increase of around 40 to 50 roles, and some of those affected were expected to be redeployed into newly created positions.
As part of that shake-up, Iconic Media confirmed that it would close London World and Bristol World, and that Liverpool World was also under review. Subsequent reporting by the trade press and by the publisher's own recruitment announcements recorded the closure of all three city websites — London, Bristol and Liverpool — with Glasgow World, Newcastle World, Manchester World and Birmingham World remaining in operation. A review of the World titles had found Glasgow and Newcastle performing particularly strongly, and LiverpoolWorld, despite its established editor and its foothold in the city, did not survive the comparison. Journalists whose roles disappeared in the closure were among those the publisher sought to redeploy as its Project50 recruitment drive created new local journalism jobs elsewhere in the group.
Legacy
LiverpoolWorld's legacy is that of a capable challenger brand overtaken by its owner's changing strategy. In its almost five years it gave Merseyside readers a second city-wide digital newsroom, led throughout by a local editor with deep roots in the city's sporting life, and it published the full mixture its launch promised — news, sport, events, heritage features, food and travel writing and community stories. Its history also illustrates the fragility of digital-only city brands launched by large groups into rival territory: built quickly, dependent on network support and search traffic, and vulnerable when a new owner reorders priorities towards the places where the group has historic titles and offices. The World experiment continued in Glasgow, Manchester, Newcastle and Birmingham after LiverpoolWorld's closure, but on Merseyside the experiment ended in 2026.
