Herald Sun
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
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 Front page of The Herald Sun on 12 December 2005 |
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| Type | Daily newspaper |
| Format | Tabloid |
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| Owner | Herald and Weekly Times Ltd (News Corp) |
| Editor | Peter Blunden |
| Founded | 1990 (The Herald - 1840 The Sun News-Pictorial - 1922) |
| Political allegiance | Conservative |
| Headquarters | 40 City Road, Southbank, Melbourne, Vic, Australia |
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| Website: www.heraldsun.com.au | |
The Herald Sun is a tabloid newspaper in Melbourne, Australia, published by The Herald and Weekly Times Ltd, a subsidiary of Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation.
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[edit] Origins
The Herald Sun 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 October 8, 1990 as The Herald-Sun. The hyphen in its title was later dropped; the last hyphenated masthead appeared on May 1, 1993. The Herald Sun is the most popular newspaper in Australia, and with a weekday circulation of 551,100 (and readership of 1,500,000).
[edit] History
The Herald was founded on January 3, 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.
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 more people using cars as a means for transport rather than trains or trams, The Herald's circulation had fallen to just under 200,000.
The Herald and Weekly Times Ltd was faced with the choice of either closing The Herald which would have meant a massive lay off of employees or merging it with its morning sister paper The Sun News-Pictorial and combining journalists and features from both papers in a new newspaper. The HWT decided to merge the two and so The Herald was published for the last time as a separate newspaper on October 5, 1990, after one hundred and fifty years, ten months and two days of publication. The next day, October 6, The Sun News-Pictorial published its last edition.
The Sun News-Pictorial was founded on September 11, 1922, and was bought by the HWT in 1925.
[edit] Liftouts/features
[edit] Monday
[edit] Tuesday
- Learn - Small section with articles and news about educational product and schoolife
- CityStyle
- Discovery - One Page Science & Nature feature
[edit] Wednesday
- Guide - TV Guide featuring reviews, opinions, letters and a weeks TV viewing guide.
- Simply Food - (First Wednesday of each month)
[edit] Thursday
- HIT - Entertainment Liftout, with music/box office charts, and news on Music & Movies
[edit] Friday
- Travel
- Cars Guide
- Main Game - (During AFL season)
[edit] Saturday
- Saturday -
- Weekend Sport -
- CareerOne -
- Real Estate -
- Home -
- Weekend -
[edit] Sunday
- Sunday Sport
- ie (Inside Entertainment)
- Escape
- Sunday
- Sunday Cars Guide
- tv guide
- Body+soul
- Stuff
[edit] Daily features (Monday to Saturday):
- Your Say
- The Eye (Weeekdays)
- Fun and Games
- Sport
- BusinessDaily
- Classifieds
- Weather
- TV Programs
- Gig Guide
[edit] Collectable items
Over the years, the Herald Sun has had a range of magazines, pins and memoribillia (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:
- Australian Football League (AFL) Trading Cards - Every year, near the start of the AFL season.
- 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 DK)
[edit] Criticisms
Criticisms are often made that its news and opinion content has no depth, is very sensationalistic and is comprised of a large proportion of 'soft' reporting. Critics say that it exhibits a right-wing bias, with some arguing that it reflects the view of one-time socialist, now conservative Rupert Murdoch who is the chief executive officer of the Herald Sun's parent company. In reference to this bias, media critics have taken to nick-naming it The Hun (e.g., ABC's MediaWatch, on 1 May 2006[1]).
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. 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.
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 [2]
The columnist Andrew Bolt often takes controversial positions, and attracts anger from the left. He has been described by John Pilger as "the lowest of journalism's low, an extreme right wing and aggressively idiotic member of Murdoch's dominant press group in Australia" [3]
[edit] Current notable journalists/columnists
- Cameron Adams
- John Anderson
- Andrew Bolt
- Terry McCrann
- Gerard McManus
- Neil Mitchell
- Mike Sheahan
- Jill Singer
- Claire Sutherland
- Ellen Whinnett
- Cameron Adams
- Robert Fidgeon
[edit] See also
[edit] External links
- The Herald Sun website
- The Port Phillip Herald and The Herald archive 1840 - 1902
- MediaWatch segment aired 1st May, 2006, ABC. "Age vs. Hun: Off-field Biff". Video accessed online 6th June, 2006.
