 Herald Sun front page 12 December 2005, reporting on the 2005 Cronulla riots |
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| Type | Daily newspaper |
|---|---|
| Format | Tabloid |
| Owner | Herald and Weekly Times Ltd (News Corporation) |
| Editor | Phil Gardner |
| Founded | 8 October 1990 (The Herald – 1840, The Sun News-Pictorial – 1922) |
| Political alignment | Centre-Right[citation needed] |
| Headquarters | 40 City Road, Southbank, Victoria, Australia |
| Website | www.heraldsun.com.au |
The Herald Sun is a morning tabloid newspaper based in Melbourne, the state capital of Victoria Australia. It is published by The Herald and Weekly Times Ltd, a subsidiary of News Limited and owned by Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation. It primarily serves Melbourne and the rest of the state of Victoria, and shares many articles with other News Limited paid daily newspapers, especially those from Australia.
The Herald Sun is the second highest-circulating daily newspaper in Australia behind Sydney's Daily Telegraph, with a weekday circulation of 551,100 and readership of 1,500,000. (1)
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Origins
The Herald Sun newspaper was formed in 1990 from a merger of the morning tabloid paper The Sun News-Pictorial with its afternoon broadsheet sister paper The Herald. It was first published on 8 October 1990 as The Herald-Sun. The hyphen in its title was later dropped; the last hyphenated masthead appeared on May 1 1993. The paper had in March 2009 a Circulation of 530,000 from Monday to Friday.[1]
History
The Herald
The Herald was founded on 3 January 1840 by George Cavanaugh as The Port Phillip Herald. In 1855, it became The Melbourne Herald for all of one week before settling on The Herald. From 1869, it was an evening newspaper. Colonel William Thomas Reay was sometime literary editor and later associate editor, before becoming managing editor in 1904.
The Sun News-Pictorial
The Sun News-Pictorial was founded on 11 September 1922, and bought by the The Herald and Weekly Times in 1925.
The merger
In its heyday, The Herald had a circulation of almost 600,000, but by the time of its 150th anniversary in 1990, with the impact of evening television news and a higher proportion of people using cars to get home from work, The Herald's circulation had fallen below 200,000. This was much less than that of the morning Sun.
As a result, The Herald and Weekly Times decided to merge the two, and so after one hundred and fifty years, ten months and two days of publication, The Herald was published for the last time as a separate newspaper on 5 October 1990. The next day, The Sun News-Pictorial published its last edition. Shortly before this, the Sunday editions of the two newspapers had been merged. The resulting newspaper had both the size and style of The Sun.
After a progressive decline in circulation the afternoon edition was cancelled, the last edition being published on December 21, 2001.[2] The News Limited produced mX has filled part of that gap, being freely distributed of an afternoon from stands throughout the Melbourne CBD, though generally not available outside that area.
Collectible items
Over the years, the Herald Sun has had a range of magazines, pins and memorabilia (usually with an outside partner) that could be obtained by either getting it out of the newspaper, or using a token from the newspaper to collect or purchase the item. Items that have been a part of this scheme include:
- The 2000 Olympic Torch Relay Pin (and album), collection includes 15 place pins and one State Pin of Victoria (2000)
- Australian Football League trading cards – every year, near the start of the AFL season (2004-present)
- Simpsons pins (2006)
- Socceroos medallions (2006)
- Celebrate 50 Years of TV (2006) – in conjunction with Nine Network
- The Ashes series pins (2006)
- Family Encyclopedia CD-ROM Collection (2006) – in conjunction with publishing company Dorling Kindersley
- The Greatest (2007) – a 14-part magazine series
- Amazing Pictures (2007) - a 4-part magazine series
Criticisms
Critics say that the Herald Sun exhibits a right-wing bias, with some arguing that it reflects the view of Rupert Murdoch, who is the chief executive officer of Herald Sun's parent company.[who?]
Shortly before the 2004 election, the Herald Sun published an article entitled "Greens back illegal drugs" (Herald Sun, 31/8/2004) written by Gerard McManus which made a number of claims about the Australian Greens based on their harm minimisation and decriminalisation policies posted on their website at the time. The Greens complained to the Australian Press Council[citation needed], not least of all because they updated said policies on their website prior to the story even being. The text of their adjudication reads:
- In the context of an approaching election, the potential damage was considerable. The actual electoral impact cannot be known but readers were seriously misled. [...] The claims made in the original article were seriously inaccurate and breached the Council's guiding principles of checking the accuracy of what is reported, taking prompt measures to counter the effects of harmfully inaccurate reporting, ensuring that the facts are not distorted, and being fair and balanced in reports on matters of public concern.
The newspaper published what the Greens saw as an unenthusiastic apologetic of the original article. Claims have been made that the paper has a strong bias in favour of the Liberal Party [3] The columnist Andrew Bolt often takes controversial positions – John Pilger has described Bolt as "the lowest of journalism's low, an extreme right wing and aggressively idiotic member of Murdoch's dominant press group in Australia".[4]
Notable journalists and columnists
- Cameron Adams
- Jon Anderson
- Andrew Bolt
- Robert Fidgeon (Deceased)[5]
- Terry McCrann
- Gerard McManus
- Neil Mitchell
- Bryan Patterson
- Robyn Riley
- Mike Sheahan
- Jill Singer
- Claire Sutherland
- Ellen Whinnett
- Mark Knight (cartoonist)
- Grantley Bernard
- Jon Ralph
- John Beveridge
- Gary Ablett Jr.
- Jimmy Bartel
- Jason Akermanis
- Peter Dumsday
See also
References
- ^ Australian Bureaux of Circulation 2009
- ^ "Vic: Herald Sun to cancel PM edition". AAP General News (Australia). www.highbeam.com. 2001-12-21. http://www.highbeam.com/doc/1P1-49079788.html. Retrieved 2009-09-21.
- ^ Your Democracy
- ^ ZMAG
- ^ Tributes for TV expert Robert Fidgeon
www.crikey.com.au/2008/11/14/newspaper-circulation-figures-slip-again-read-all-about
External links
- Herald Sun
- The Port Phillip Herald and The Herald archive, 1840-1902
- Media Watch segment aired 1 May 2006, ABC. "Age vs. Hun: Off-field Biff". Video accessed online 6 June 2006.
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