A new newspaper launched on Wednesday with a commitment to asking the difficult questions, and was unable to supply an example of one.

"We exist to hold power to account," said the editor, standing in front of a masthead that had been finalised at some point on Tuesday afternoon. "That is the entire reason we exist."

Asked which power, the editor said that was precisely the sort of question the paper had been founded to look into.

The mission

The mission statement runs to four hundred words and uses the word fearless three times. It is published on the front page, directly above the only article, which is about the mission statement.

It promises rigorous, independent journalism, free of the commercial pressures that have compromised the rest of the industry. The paper has no advertisers, no proprietor and no readers, and has described this as editorial independence.

The newsroom

The newsroom consists of the editor, who is also the chief correspondent, the sub-editor, and the person who chose the font.

"We are lean," the editor said. "Lean is a strength. The legacy outlets have layers. We have one layer and it goes all the way down."

The paper has a corrections policy. It was written before the paper had published anything, which the editor characterised as getting ahead of it.

What happens next

The paper intends to publish daily. Asked what Thursday's story would be, the editor said the newsroom was pursuing several threads, and then, after a pause, said it would most likely be about something that had happened.

A second pause followed, during which the editor appeared to reconsider the word happened.

On the record

Pressed a final time for an example of a hard question, the editor said there were a number of them, and that it would not be appropriate to ask any of them here.