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)
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.
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.{{cite web |url=http://www.highbeam.com/doc/1P1-49079788.html
|title=Vic: Herald Sun to cancel PM edition |work=AAP General News
(Australia) |date=2001-12-21 |publisher=www.highbeam.com
|accessdate=2009-09-21 }} The News Limited produced ''[[mX
(newspaper)|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
==Controversies== 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.
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 , 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 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".
Notable journalists and columnists
See also
References
www.crikey.com.au/2008/11/14/newspaper-circulation-figures-slip-again-read-all-about
External links
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