Overview
The Sydney Morning Herald is historically credited with high standards of journalism but in recent years it has been criticised for declining standards, with an increased focus on gossip, large photographs and racier headlines.
Fairfax Media publishes a variety of supplements, including the magazines Good Weekend (which is included in the Saturday editions of The Age and The Sydney Morning Herald; and the(sydney)magazine, with a counter-part the(melbourne)magazine released in the sister-city publication. There are a variety of lift-outs, some of them co-branded with Fairfax Media's online classified advertising sites:
- The Guide (television) on Monday
- Good Living (food) and Domain (real estate) on Tuesday
- Money (personal finance) on Wednesday
- Drive (motor), Metro (entertainment) on Friday
- News Review, Spectrum (arts and entertainment guide), Domain (real estate), Drive (motoring) and MyCareer (employment) on Saturday
Defunct sections include a dot-com section called Biz.com published in the late 1990s and a youth section called Radar published in the early 2000s. In a cost-cutting drive, editorial production of several of these sections was outsourced in 2008.
According to Roy Morgan Research Readship Surveys, in the twelve months to March 2011, the paper was read 766,000 times on Monday to Friday, and read 1,014,000 times on Saturdays. The Audit Bureau of Circulations audit on newspaper circulation states that on average in excess of 209,500 copies sold per day, Monday to Friday, and 340,127 copies of the Saturday edition sold.
The editor is Sean Aylmer. Former editors include Frederick William Ward, Charles Brunsdon Fletcher, Colin Bingham, Max Prisk, John Alexander, Paul McGeough, Alan Revell, Alan Oakley and Peter Fray.
Read more about this topic: The Sydney Morning Herald