Newcastle Herald
The Newcastle Herald is a local tabloid newspaper published daily, Monday to Saturday, in Newcastle, New South Wales, Australia. It is the only local newspaper that serves the greater Hunter Region and Central Coast region six days a week. It is owned by Australian Community Media.
Overview
The Newcastle Herald is the largest local news agency in the Hunter region. It is also well read in Sydney and interstate.The paper features the only classifieds section published six days a week across the region.
The Newcastle Herald employs more than 310 full-time staff.
History
The Newcastle 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.
Some of the paper's first articles document the Newcastle Earthquake of 1868, riots, severe storms and the sinking of Cawarra, the worst shipwreck in Newcastle's history that claimed the lives of sixty passengers on the Brisbane-bound passenger ship. It was also during the paper's infant years that the Newcastle rail line was extended to Watt Street, Newcastle became a municipality, the Miners' Federation was formed and gas lighting was introduced to the city.
In 1873 in Nelson St, Plattsburg, 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 4,000 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 Street, Newcastle, and on 3 April 1876, the first copies of The Newcastle Morning Herald and Miners Advocate were published. 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 6 October 1980, when a more modern and simpler masthead was introduced, dropping the "Morning" and "Miners Advocate" from the title.
As with the Chronicle the first years of The Newcastle Morning Herald and Miners Advocate were to be also marred by tragedy. Some of the first stories printed by the newly named paper included the sinking of Yarra Yarra off Newcastle with no survivors, a fire in Scott Street, deaths at the Greta coal mine, coal strikes and the beginning of the Boer War. Among other stories of local importance were the sinking of the Newcastle-Stockton ferry Bluebell in 1934, The Newcastle Tragedy of 1927 and the Japanese attack on the city's East End and dockyards in 1942.