Two ‘good news’ newspapers set up five years ago by a group of ex-regional daily staffers appear to have ceased publication.

East Durham Life and Stockton and Billingham Life were launched in 2019 as sister titles to Hartlepool Life, founded two years earlier.

The three independent titles specialised in what they termed “positive news” with no coverage of crime or politics.

However although Hartlepool Life is continuing, HTFP understands that the East Durham and Stockton and Billingham titles have now ceased publication.

According to the company’s website, the last edition of East Durham Life was published on 30th May and the last edition of Stockton and Billingham Life on 23rd May.

No-one from Hartlepool Life has responded to our requests for comment, but HTFP understands that the two titles were no longer considered economically viable.

The ‘Life’ titles were the brainchild of a group of former Hartlepool Mail staffers – former news editor Steve Hartley, picture editor Dirk Van Der Werff and newspaper sales manager Paul Healey, after conceiving the idea at a monthly get-together of ex-Mail employees.

Only available by pick-up, it initially ran to 32 pages with a print run of 25,000.

Explaining the emphasis on ‘good news’ Dirk said at the time: “Facebook and online forums do anger and darkness and negativity so much better nowadays, so we’re a newspaper without any of those things – and our readers love it.”

East Durham Life was subsequently launched to cover the area to the north of their patch, followed in April 2019 by Stockton and Billingham Life, although plans for a fourth title never materialised.