 Front page of The Courier-Mail 25 July 2008 |
|
| Type | Daily newspaper |
|---|---|
| Format | Tabloid |
| Owner | News Corporation |
| Publisher | Queensland Newspapers |
| Editor | David Fagan |
| Founded | 1933 |
| Language | English |
| Headquarters |  Brisbane, Australia41 Campbell St Bowen Hills QLD 4006 |
| Circulation | 224,689 Monday-Friday 326,767 Saturday |
| Official website | news.com.au/couriermail |
The Courier-Mail is a daily newspaper published in Brisbane, Australia. Owned by News Corporation, it is published daily from Monday to Saturday in tabloid format. Its editorial offices are located at Bowen Hills, in Brisbane's inner northern suburbs, and it is printed at Murarrie, in Brisbane's eastern suburbs.
Contents |
History
Sidney Lyons, a writer, arrived in Brisbane from Sydney in early 1846 with a plan to establish a newspaper, possibly influenced by Rev. Dr. John Dunmore Lang, who had encouraged Sidney Lyons to emigrate to Australia. Sidney Lyons recruited James Swan, a printer who had previously worked on Rev. Dr. John Dunmore Lang's newspaper "The Colonialist in Sydney. The two men established themselves in a garret of a building on the corner of Queen Street, Brisbane and Albert Street, Brisbane (a building later known as the North Star Hotel).
The first issue of the Moreton Bay Courier, consisting of 4 pages, appeared on Saturday 20 June 1846 with Sidney Lyons as editor and James Swan as publisher. It was published weekly on Saturdays.
However, after about 18 months of working together, Lyons and Swan continually disagreed on many aspects of editorial policy, including transportation of convicts and squatting, and Lyons took over sole control in late 1847. However, Lyons ran into money problems, allowing James Swan to take sole control. Eventually James Swan sold the newspaper to Thomas Blacket Stephens in 1859[1][2].
The Moreton Bay Courier was purchased by Thomas Blacket Stephens in May 1861, and he soon turned it into a daily newspaper, the Courier. In 1864 it became the Brisbane Courier. In June-July 1868, he floated the Brisbane Newspaper Company, and transferred the plant and copyright of the Brisbane Courier to it.[3] He was the managing director until he retired in November 1873, when the paper was auctioned.[4][5] John James Knight was editor-in-chief of the Brisbane Courier 1906-16 and later was managing director and then chairman of all the company's publications.[6]
The first edition of The Courier-Mail was published on 28 August 1933 after a merger of The Brisbane Courier (founded as The Moreton Bay Courier on 20 June 1846) and The Daily Mail (first published on 3 October 1903). This merger was necessitated by the Great Depression which had caused both papers to make financial losses.
Political position
Like most newspapers owned by News Corporation, The Courier-Mail generally supports free market economic policies and the process of globalisation. It supported the 2003 invasion of Iraq[citation needed].
Circulation
The Courier-Mail has the fourth-highest circulation of any daily newspaper in Australia with 224,689 sales Monday to Friday, and 326,767 on Saturdays (June 2006 figures). Around three-quarters of the paper's readership is located in the Brisbane metropolitan area.[7]
Although often claimed to be Brisbane's only daily newspaper since the demise of the afternoon newspaper The Telegraph in 1988, it arguably has had two competitors since 2007. News Corporation itself has published mX, a free afternoon newspaper, since 2007, but mX has a relatively low news content. However, Fairfax Media has published the online Brisbane Times since 2007, which has comparable news content to couriermail.com.au.
Editors
- 1890s Frederick William Ward
- 2008 David Fagan
Journalists
Prominent journalists and columnists include Terry Sweetman and Mike O'Connor. Its current Editor is David Fagan, who is married to columnist and 612 ABC Brisbane radio broadcaster Madonna King. Deputy editor is Steve Gibbons, former editor-in-chief of the Australian Provincial Newspapers group and a senior editor at The Age and Sunday Age in Melbourne. Its editorial cartoonist is Sean Leahy. For thirty years the paper's senior rugby league football journalist was former Australian vice-captain Jack Reardon.
Change to tabloid
From its inception until recently The Courier-Mail was a broadsheet newspaper. On 14 December 2005 it was announced that the paper would change to a tabloid sometime in early 2006, however the term "tabloid" was not used in favour of the term "compact"[8]. This linguistic choice was probably related to widespread public view that many tabloids, including those published by News Limited, were low quality publications (see tabloid for discussion of this size and quality issue). Much emphasis was made that it was merely the paper size that was changing and not the journalistic quality. The last broadsheet edition was published on Saturday 11 March 2006, and the first tabloid edition was published on Monday 13 March 2006. On the same day, the paper's website was revamped and expanded.
The change to a "compact" format brought The Courier-Mail in line with all other News Limited Australian metropolitan daily newspapers. This followed the change to a tabloid format by The Advertiser of Adelaide - another News Corporation newspaper - some years earlier. Despite the claims that there would be no loss of journalistic quality, the Courier-Mail in its "compact" format is not well-regarded for its journalism, e.g. Crikey described it as "one of the contestants in a close run field for worst paper in Australia"[9].
See also
References
- ^ Brisbane Courier, Tuesday 2 June 1891, page 5
- ^ Brisbane Courier, Saturday 20 June 1896, pages 7-8
- ^ T. B. Stephens (July 2, 1868). "Notice". The Brisbane Courier. http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article1324820.
- ^ Stephens, Thomas Blacket (1819 - 1877), Australian Dictionary of Biography
- ^ Judith Womersley, Mark Richmond (2001). AussieData: From Prehistory to the Present. Wakefield Press. p. 160. ISBN 1862545456.
- ^ H. J. Summers, 'Knight, John James (1863 - 1927)', Australian Dictionary of Biography, Volume 9, MUP, 1983, pp 622-623
- ^ "The Courier-Mail Demographics". http://metro.newsmedianet.com.au/home/titles/title/Demographics.jsp?titleid=7. Retrieved 2007-02-09.
- ^ Blog of Andrew Bartlett
- ^ Crikey Bias-o-meter: The Newspapers
External links
- Digitised historic Courier-Mail from the National Library of Australia
- Digitised Brisbane Courier from the National Library of Australia
- Digitised Courier from the National Library of Australia
- Digitised Moreton Bay Courier from the National Library of Australia
- The Courier-Mail online
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