The Herald Sun is a morning tabloid newspaper based in Melbourne, Australia. It is published by The Herald and Weekly Times, a part of News Limited, which is a part of News Corporation. It can be bought in Melbourne, Regional Victoria, Tasmania, the Australian Capital Territory and border regions of South Australia and Southern New South Wales. The Herald Sun shares many articles with other News Corporation daily newspapers, especially those from Australia.

The Herald Sun is the biggest selling daily newspaper in Australia. It sells about 515,000 copies each day and is read by 1,500,000 people.

Origins
The Herald Sun newspaper was formed in 1990 when the morning tabloid paper The Sun News-Pictorial joined with the afternoon broadsheet paper The Herald. It was first published on 8 October 1990 as the Herald-Sun. The hyphen in its title was dropped on May 1, 1993.

History

The Herald

The Herald was started on 3 January 1840 by George Cavanaugh as The Port Phillip Herald. In 1855, it became The Melbourne Herald, but a week later became 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 began on 11 September 1922, and bought by The Herald and Weekly Times in 1925.

The merger
The Herald once sold almost 600,000 copies, but by the time of its 150th anniversary in 1990 it had fallen below 200,00. This was caused by the impact of evening television news and more people using cars to get home from work.'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. The Sunday editions of the two newspapers had already been merged. The resulting newspaper had both the size and style of The Sun News-Pictorial.

With sales still falling, the afternoon edition was cancelled, the last edition being published on December 21, 2001. The News Limited now produces mX a free afternoon paper that can be picked up from stands throughout the Melbourne CBD. It is not available outside that area.

Recent editors include Peter Blunden, Simon Pristel, Phil Gardner and Bruce Guthrie.

Collectible items
Over the 600 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)
The 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
Discovery Atlas DVD Collection (2009)

Notable journalists and columnists
Jon Anderson
Andrew Bolt
Robert Fidgeon
Terry McCrann
Neil Mitchell
Mike Sheahan
Jill Singer
Mark Knight (cartoonist)
Gary Ablett Jr.
Jimmy Bartel
Jason Akermanis
Eddie McGuire
Gerard McManus
Osmar White

Related papers
The Sunday edition is called the Sunday Herald Sun. In Sydney it is closely linked with The Daily Telegraph and The Sunday Telegraph. 
In Brisbane, it is linked with The Courier-Mail and The Sunday Mail.
In Adelaide, The Advertiser and Sunday Mail.
In Perth,  The Sunday Times.
In Hobart, The Mercury and The Sunday Tasmanian.
In Darwin, The Northern Territory News and Sunday Territorian.

References

Other websites
Herald Sun
The Port Phillip Herald and The Herald archive, 1840-1902
Media Watch segment aired 1 May 2006, ABC. "Age vs. Hun: Off-field Biff". Video accessed online 6 June 2006.

Newspapers published in Australia