The Story of the Newspaper in Australia- The Amazing Facts! 1 Likes

Do you know there are 2 national and 10 state/territory daily newspapers, 35 regional dailies and 470 other regional and suburban newspapers in Australia? All major metropolitan newspapers are owned either by News Limited, a subsidiary of News Corporation, or Fairfax Media, except The West Australian. The two national daily newspapers are The Australian and The Australian Financial Review. Other notable newspapers are The Sydney Morning Herald, The Daily Telegraph, The Age, and The Herald Sun (Melbourne).

Early Australian newspapers are an important record of local, state and national events and their pages are a rich source of information about a community's history. Many major newspapers in circulation today can trace their origins to publications from the colonial period. However, the appearance, content and control of newspapers in the late 19th century reflected the distinct and often turbulent environment of the first Australian colonies.

Few Facts

·In November 1800, The Royal Admiral docked in the colony carrying a transported convict, George Howe, who arrived with printing experience from the West Indies and London. These valuable skills were quickly put to work at the government press, and the colony's first locally published book, a compilation of government orders, was produced in 1802.

·George Howe was also permitted to print Australia's first newspaper from a humble shed located at the rear of Government House. From 5 March 1803, the Sydney Gazette and New South Wales Advertiser was on sale as a weekly edition with four portfolio pages of official material and a limited number of private notices.

·Australia's earliest newspaper, the Sydney Gazette and New South Wales Advertiser, was first printed in 1803.

·In 1810 the second newspaper in Australia, the Derwent Star and Van Diemen's Land Intelligencer was founded in Van Diemen's Land, but ceased the same year.

·The Sydney Gazette was the only newspaper circulated in the colony until the appearance of William Charles Wentworth's paper, The Australian, in 1824.

·By the mid-thirties, New South Wales had seven papers, South Australia had five weekly papers by 1841 and Tasmania had eleven papers by 1854. By 1886, records show there were at least 48 daily papers circulating in Australian states, however many of these papers only appeared for a short period.

·Victoria's first paper was the Melbourne Advertiser in 1838.

·By the mid-1850s, there were 11 papers in Tasmania. The Tasmanian and Port Dalrymple Advertiser founded in Launceston in 1825 was the first provincial newspaper in Australia.

·Australia's longest running newspaper, the Sydney Morning Herald, was first published as the Sydney Herald in 1831. The Herald's rival, the Daily Telegraph, was first published in July 1879. Weekly newspapers were an important feature of the Australian newspaper scene in the nineteenth century.

·The telegraph connected Melbourne, Sydney, Adelaide and Brisbane in 1861, and Britain was linked to Australia in 1872. Alongside the telephone's emergence in the 1880s, telegraphic transfer helped journalists rapidly receive and send news across greater distances.

·Australia's first national daily newspaper, Daily Commercial News (now Lloyd's List Australia) was first published in April 1891. Only during the second part of the twentieth century did other national newspapers start to be published.

·Australia's first foreign language newspaper, Die Deutsche Post für die australischen Kolonien was published in Adelaide in 1848.

·Australian historian Clive Turnbull proposed that the era of modern journalism began in the 1920s as companies took over control of newspapers and the popularity of a news story became increasingly important.

·The Sydney Sun was the first daily paper to carry a news story on its front page in 1910 and Melbourne's Sun News-Pictorial was the first daily pictorial tabloid (newspaper with pictures) in 1922.

·Four prominent dailies emerged during this period: The Age , the Argus, The Sydney Morning Herald and The Daily Telegraph . Competition was keen, and the reporters at the Argus once handed telegraph operators a copy of the Bible in an attempt to take over the wires and prevent other newspapers from sending their stories.

·During the 1980s and 1990s colour printing and cold offset printing took place in the production of newspapers. Many newspapers became available in electronic form either on CD-ROM or via the World Wide Web.

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