The Herald Sun is a morning tabloid newspaper based in Melbourne, Australia. It is published by The Herald and Weekly Times, a subsidiary of News Limited, itself a subsidiary of News Corporation. It is available for purchase throughout Melbourne, Regional Victoria, Tasmania, the Australian Capital Territory and border regions of South Australia and Southern New South Wales. The Herald Sun primarily serves Victoria and shares many articles with other News Corporation paid daily newspapers, especially those from Australia.
The Herald Sun is the highest-circulating daily newspaper in Australia, with a weekday circulation of 515,000 and readership of 1,500,000.
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 1 May 1993.
The paper had in March 2009 a circulation of 530,000 from Monday to Friday.
History
The Herald
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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 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 News-Pictorial.
After a progressive decline in circulation the afternoon edition was cancelled, the last edition being published on 21 December 2001. 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.
Recent editors include Peter Blunden, Simon Pristel, Phil Gardner and Bruce Guthrie.
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)
The 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
Discovery Atlas DVD Collection (2009)
Controversies
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. 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.
Notable journalists and columnists
Jon Anderson
Andrew Bolt
Robert Fidgeon
Terry McCrann
Neil Mitchell
Mike Sheahan
Jill Singer
Mark Knight (cartoonist)
Gary Ablett Jr.
Jimmy Bartel
Jason Akermanis
Eddie McGuire
Gerard McManus
Osmar White
Counterparts
The Sunday edition is called the
Sunday Herald Sun. Its counterparts in
Sydney are
The Daily Telegraph and
The Sunday Telegraph.
In
Brisbane, it is linked with
The Courier-Mail and
The Sunday Mail.
In
Adelaide,
The Advertiser and
Sunday Mail.
In
Perth,
The Sunday Times.
In
Hobart,
The Mercury and
The Sunday Tasmanian.
In
Darwin, The
Northern Territory News and
Sunday Territorian.
See also
List of newspapers in Australia
References
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.
Category:Publications established in 1990
Category:News Corporation subsidiaries
Category:Newspapers published in Melbourne
