Herald Sun masthead
The Herald Sun is a
newspaper in
Melbourne,
Australia, that is published by
The Herald and Weekly Times Ltd, a subsidiary of
Rupert Murdoch's
News Corporation.
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 quietly dropped; the last hyphenated masthead appeared on
May 1, 1993. The
Herald Sun is the most popular newspaper in Australia, and with 551,100 readers, it even outsells its Sydney counterpart,
The Daily Telegraph http://www.heraldsun.news.com.au/printpage/0,5481,10458913,00.html.
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 old Herald and Weekly Times building in Flinders Street, Melbourne
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 the best 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.
The Herald Sun, like all
Rupert Murdoch-owned tabloids, supports politically and socially conservative views. Compared to its Sydney stablemate,
The Daily Telegraph, it is a little more restrained in its style of reporting, though it is still more populist in its reporting than a typical broadsheet. Media critics, such as the
ABCs Media Watch program, have regularly pointed out that like other Murdoch papers it consistently reflects its proprietors views and commercial interests even where they diverge from the paper's audience.
Its major competitor is the social-democratic-leaning broadsheet
The Age, which it outsells substantially (although
The Age dominates the
classified advertising market). It gives little coverage to political analysis, the mainstay of any broadsheet newspaper; its strengths are its sports reporting and a general lack of pretension.
The old Herald and Weekly Times building located in
Flinders Street is currently undergoing redevelopment. A 36 floor
office tower is being built above the old building, which, being heritage listed, cannot be fully demolished. Its exterior, including the
neon HERALD SUN sign and the former
radio antennas on the roof for
radio station 3DB, that was also housed in the building for many years, cannot be removed. The interior of the building was gutted after the HWT moved out in 1995 after seventy-two years in the building. Apartments will be built inside the old structure.
External links
Category:News Corporation subsidiaries
Category:Australian newspapers