About The Sun Herald

The Sun-Herald was first published in October 1953 and is on sale throughout NSW, south-east Queensland and Victoria every Sunday. An early edition is available on Saturday evenings in metropolitan Sydney.

As well as colour magazines and lifestyle sections, the newspaper brings you all the latest news, features, sport and racing each week.

The paper was redesigned in May 2001 with the aim of making it easier to read and easier for families to share around.

The Sun-Herald includes lift-out sections:

• Investor - the ideal weekly guide to making and saving money.

• Sport - Great writing, breaking news and spectacular photography are the elements that make Sport one of the most popular sections of the paper.

• Travel - provides a comprehensive guide to Australia's multi billion dollar tourism industry.

• S - From arts and entertainment to style and shopping, S has the news, reviews and interviews to keep you up to date with what's happening in Sydney.

• Sunday Domain - packed with the lifestyle tips, the latest residential property news and a comprehensive summary of the week's auctions.

• Television - offers readers a comprehensive overview of the coming week's viewing including movie reviews, as well as previews and commentary on popular drama, comedies and lifestyle programs.

• SundayLife - SundayLife is about the way we live, the way we are and what we do about it.

24 Hours at the Sun Herald

6am Saturday: The editor starts work at home

The Editor starts the day at his breakfast table scanning the morning's major newspapers. He needs to get across the breadth of news that is unfolding across Australia and overseas.

By the time the day starts in earnest at the office, the Editor has read the major Sydney newspapers and international news wires, listened to radio news broadcasts and watched local and satellite TV news services to get a feel for what's happening. He'll draw up a list of story ideas he thinks The Sun-Herald should report and how to cover them during the day.

8am: The news desk

The hub of the paper is the news desk. Here the Chief-of-Staff monitors what's happening around NSW and nationally. The Chief-of-Staff will brief reporters and get updates from them as the day progresses and their stories develop. Reporters with story ideas either on Saturday or during the week can pitch them to the Chief-of-Staff.

The Picture Editor allocates photographers to stories. International and Australian news agencies' pictures are monitored by the photographic desk. The Chief-of-Staff and Picture Editor, along with other editors, attend the news conferences to decide which stories and pictures will be published and where in the paper they'll appear.

9am: News conference gets underway

Each day The Sun-Herald editors meet to decide what ideas and stories they are going to ask the reporters to chase for that week's paper.

On Saturday, the morning before the paper starts printing, the Editor and his deputies discuss the day's agenda along with the chief of staff, photographic editor and production editors.
They decide what stories need to be covered that day and assign those stories and others that have already been written to particular pages in the paper.

During the week: The ad book is prepared

Newspapers generate revenue from advertising. During the week, display ads are assigned to various pages, dictating the size of the newspaper.

The Sun-Herald uses a ratio of editorial to advertising space so that pages are balanced to meet the needs of readers and advertisers.

A blueprint of the booked advertising space, called the "ad book'', is prepared on Thursday and Friday to let editors know what space they have to run stories. News stories, pictures and headlines are laid out around the advertisements.

3pm: Photographers and reporters out in the field

The Sun-Herald contains a big sport section as a great deal of live sport happens on Saturdays, especially football of several codes and horse racing.

Photographers covering sport, such as rugby league games, can provide the sports section with "live'' pictures from Saturday's events. Using digital cameras they are able to send photos, using a laptop computer, straight back to the office where the sports editor is waiting to use them in the next morning's newspaper.

Because The Sun-Herald circulates throughout NSW and into Victoria and south-east Queensland, the paper has to start printing early on Saturday evening in order to get it to towns and cities around the State by the next morning.

Here the papers come off the presses at Chullora in Sydney where Fairfax Printers print more than 650,000 Sun-Heralds each Saturday night.