Herald Sun

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This article is about a newspaper published in Melbourne, Australia. For the newspaper published in Durham, North Carolina, USA, see The Herald-Sun (Durham, North Carolina).
Image:Herald Sun front page 12-12-2005.jpg
Herald Sun front page 12 December 2005
Type Daily newspaper
Format Tabloid
Owner Herald and Weekly Times Ltd (News Corporation)
Editor Bruce Guthrie
Founded 8 October 1990
(The Herald – 1840,
The Sun News-Pictorial – 1922)
Political allegiance Centre-right
Headquarters 40 City Road,
Southbank, Victoria, Australia
Website: www.heraldsun.com.au

The Herald Sun is a morning tabloid newspaper based in Melbourne, Australia. It is published by The Herald and Weekly Times Ltd (HWT), 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 highest daily circulating newspaper in Australia, with a weekday circulation of 551,100 and readership of 1,500,000.

Contents

[edit] 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.

[edit] History

[edit] The Herald

The old Herald and Weekly Times building in Flinders Street.
The old Herald and Weekly Times building in Flinders Street.

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. From 1869, it was an evening newspaper.

[edit] The Sun News-Pictorial

The Sun News-Pictorial was founded on 11 September 1922, and bought by the HWT in 1925.

[edit] 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 HWT 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.

[edit] Print editions

Like most morning newspapers, Herald Sun was released as a number of editions throughout the day. However after mX became established in the early 2000s, a give-away afternoon newspaper also by the HWT, the afternoon edition was scrapped.

[edit] Liftouts, sections and features

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[edit] Monday

  • Youth forum – letters from school-aged children on a variety of topical issues
  • Provincial Form Liftout – four-page horse racing guide providing fields and form comment for the major Victorian race meeting, fields for the day's interstate thoroughbred meetings, and Victorian harness and greyhound racing meetings

[edit] Tuesday

  • Learn – small section with articles and news about educational product and school life
  • CityStyle – fashion, food news and reviews
  • Discovery – one-page science and nature feature
  • Provincial Form Liftout – four-page horse racing guide providing fields and form comment for the major Victorian race meeting, fields for the day's interstate thoroughbred meetings, Victorian harness and greyhound racing meetings, and fields for interstate harness racing meetings and also melbourne cup.

[edit] Wednesday

  • Guide – television reviews, opinions, letters and a week's viewing guide
  • Connect – technology news and reviews
  • Simply Food – recipes and nutrition information (first Wednesday of each month)
  • Superform Liftout – eight-page horse racing guide providing fields and extended form for the major Victorian race meeting, and fields for the day's Victorian harness and greyhound racing as well as various interstate thoroughbred meetings

[edit] Thursday

  • HIT – entertainment lift-out, with music/box office charts, and news on music and movies
  • Provincial Form Liftout – eight-page horse racing guide providing fields and extended form for the major Victorian race meeting, and fields for the day's Victorian harness and greyhound racing as well as various interstate thoroughbred meetings

[edit] Friday

  • Travel and Accommodation
  • Cars Guide
  • Main Game – during the AFL season
  • Superform Liftout – 12-page horse racing guide that includes extended form and analysis for Saturday's major Melbourne meeting, and form comment for Saturday's Sydney meeting. Also includes fields and form for many of Friday's thoroughbred, harness and greyhound racing meetings

[edit] Saturday

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  • Saturday – stories about people, events and issues of interest to Victoria and Australia
  • Weekend Sport – reports from Friday night's sporting games, previews of the weekend's action, feature stories and results from various sports both local and international
  • Superform Liftout – 16-page horse racing guide that includes extended form and analysis for the major Melbourne meeting, and form comment for the Sydney, Brisbane, Adelaide and Victorian provincial meetings. Also includes fields and form for the night's harness racing and greyhound racing meetings
  • CareerOne – news and advice on the job market, classified job advertisements
  • RealEstate – auction reports, pictorial spreads and real estate advertisements
  • Home – full-colour home improvement magazine
  • Weekend – entertainment features, weekend movie guide, gardening, books and special interest columns
  • Corinella - children's page, featuring colouring competition

[edit] Sunday

  • Sunday Sport – coverage of the weekend's AFL matches, news, features and results from various sports both local and international; includes photo finish prints of each of Saturday's horse racing events
  • Provincial Form Liftout – eight-page horse racing guide providing fields and form for Sunday's Victorian race meetings, and fields for the day's Victorian harness and greyhound racing as well as various interstate thoroughbred meetings
  • ie (Inside Entertainment)
  • Escape
  • Sunday
  • Sunday Cars Guide
  • TV guide
  • Body+soul
  • Stuff

[edit] Daily features (Monday to Saturday)

  • Your Say
  • Confidential (weekdays; formerly "The Eye")
  • Fun and Games
  • Sport
  • Racing liftout (four pages on Monday and Tuesday; eight pages on Wednesday and Thursday)
  • BusinessDaily
  • Classifieds
  • Weather
  • TV Programs
  • Gig Guide

[edit] Collectable 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

[edit] Criticisms

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. In reference to this perceived bias, some have taken to calling it "The Hun" (for example, ABC TV's Media Watch, 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 based on policies posted on their website at the time. The Greens complained to the Australian Press Council[citation needed] after withdrawing the policy statements from their website (but prior to the story being printed). 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. John Pilger has described him 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] Notable journalists and columnists

[edit] See also

[edit] References

  1. ^ Media Watch Transcript
  2. ^ Your Democracy
  3. ^ ZMAG
  4. ^ Tributes for TV expert Robert Fidgeon

[edit] External links