The Newcastle Herald
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
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| Type | Daily newspaper |
| Format | Tabloid |
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| Owner | John Fairfax Holdings |
| Editor | R. Quinn |
| Founded | 1858 |
| Headquarters | 28-30 Bolton Street (PO Box 510), Newcastle 2300 Also has offices in Maitland, Erina, Raymond Terrace and Nelson Bay |
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| Website: The Herald.com.au | |
The Newcastle Herald (branded as The Herald) is a local tabloid newspaper published daily, Monday to Saturday, in Newcastle, New South Wales, the largest non-capital city in Australia. It is the only local newspaper that serves the entire Hunter and Central Coast regions six days a week. It is owned by John Fairfax Holdings.
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[edit] About The Herald
The Herald is the largest local media organisation, and enjoys a long affinity and reader involvement with the region's residents. It is also well read in Sydney (with readership figures showing an 20% increase in Sydney readership on Saturdays) and interstate, and is usually seen as an accurate record of business and local data for those looking to relocate to the region.
Its readership, 153,000 Monday to Friday and 225,000 Saturday, outrates the audience of the nightly NBN News bulletin and 60 Minutes program.
The paper features the only classifieds section published six days a week across the region.
The Herald, along with its sister free weekly The Post, employs more than 310 full-time staff, and injects $17 million into the local economy each year.
[edit] History
The Herald had its origins in two early newspapers, The Newcastle Chronicle and Hunter River District News and The Miners Advocate and Northumberland Recorder.
Established in 1858, the Chronicle began as a weekly journal carrying mining, shipping, court and some small items of local news. It cost just sixpence. In the years that followed it took on more of the appearance of a newspaper, became a bi-weekly and then tri-weekly, and by 1876 its last edition was priced at two pence.
In 1873 in Nelson St, Plattsburg (now part of Wallsend), The Miners Advocate and Northumberland Recorder was first published. Under the guidance of founder John Miller Sweet, the paper flourished and by 1876 it was a tri-weekly selling for three pence and with a circulation of 4000 copies a week.
John Sweet's father-in-law, James Fletcher, believed the region was ready for a bigger newspaper published daily and persuaded his son-in-law to expand. The Advocate moved to Bolton St, Newcastle, and on April 3, 1876, the first copies of The Newcastle Morning Herald and Miners Advocate hit the streets. The first Herald and Advocate masthead was ornate and carried a sketch of a colliery pit-top, including poppet head and chimney. Such ornate mastheads stayed with The Herald for 104 years, the last major change being on October 6, 1980, when a more modern and simpler masthead was introduced, dropping the "Morning" and "Miners Advocate" from the title.
[edit] Move to tabloid
In July 1998, the newspaper rebranded itself as "the compact with impact" after going tabloid in size. According to the newspaper's proponents the move to tabloid was an immediate success, and the newspaper's circulation has grown more than 21 per cent since then. Others have argued that the paper's journalism values suffered and that the paper had become more sensationalist and less analytical as a result. [1] As The Newcastle Herald was one of the first Australian newspapers to switch from broadsheet to tabloid, the paper is often cited as an example when other Australian newspapers are contemplating or alleged to be contemplating a similar move.
