The Sydney Morning Herald

• 1. Introduction

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  The Sydney Morning Herald has been printing since 1831, making it the oldest continuously published newspaper in Australia. It started as a four-page weekly called the Sydney Herald, founded by three men who had worked together at the now-defunct Sydney Gazette: Ward Stephens, Frederick Stokes, and William McGarvie. Their initial print run was just 750 copies. What began as a modest colonial broadsheet would grow into something far more ambitious. How did a small weekly with 750 readers become the paper that Australia calls its newspaper of record? And what does nearly two centuries of publication reveal about the country it covers?

• 2. From Weekly to Daily

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  John Fairfax, an Englishman, purchased the operation in 1841 and renamed it The Sydney Morning Herald the following year. His stated editorial philosophy was grounded in candour, honesty and honour. He wrote that the paper had "no wish to mislead; no interest to gratify by unsparing abuse or indiscriminate approbation." That declaration of principle anchored the Fairfax family's editorial identity for nearly 150 years of ownership.

  The paper had begun publishing daily in 1840, the year before Fairfax bought it. Donald Murray, who invented a predecessor of the teleprinter, worked at the Herald during the 1890s. A weekly "Page for Women" was added in 1905, edited by Theodosia Ada Wallace.

  One telling indicator of where the paper placed its priorities: the SMH did not print news on its front page until the 15th of April 1944. Before that date, the front page was reserved for advertising. Among the country's metropolitan dailies, only The West Australian was slower to make that particular switch. In 1949, the paper launched a Sunday edition called The Sunday Herald. Four years later, that edition merged with the newly acquired Sun newspaper to create The Sun-Herald, which continues to this day.

• 3. Fairfax, Collapse, and Reinvention

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  Fairfax went public in 1957 and expanded across magazines, radio, and television. For decades it grew steadily, but the company's collapse came swiftly. On the 11th of December 1990, Warwick Fairfax, the great-great-grandson of founder John Fairfax, attempted to privatise the group by borrowing $1.8 billion. The effort failed and the group collapsed. Conrad Black acquired it before it was re-listed in 1992.

  In 2006, Fairfax announced a merger with Rural Press, which brought John B. Fairfax, a family member, back into the company as a significant player. The format debates arrived in 2007, when Fairfax announced plans to shift both the SMH and its Melbourne sister paper The Age from broadsheet to the smaller compact size, following the example of The Times. Those plans were abandoned later that year. Fairfax raised the question again in June 2012, committing this time to tabloid size by March 2013 and announcing cuts of 1,900 staff across the group over three years.

  The final Saturday broadsheet edition ran on the 22nd of February 2014. The compact format launched on the 1st of March 2014, and the printing plant at Chullora was decommissioned in June 2014. From the 10th of December 2018, Fairfax Media merged into Nine Entertainment. This reunited the Herald with a television network: Fairfax had originally been the founding owner of ATN, the station that eventually became part of the Seven Network.

• 4. Colonial Sins and a Long Apology

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  The front page of The Sydney Herald on the 26th of December 1836 contained language that is difficult to read. In the wake of what later became known as the Myall Creek massacre, in which at least twenty-eight unarmed Wirraayaraay men, women and children were murdered by a group of white stockmen, the paper published a long letter from a squatter defending the killings. The squatter described Aboriginal Australians in language so degrading it is now understood as advocacy for extermination.

  The editorial stance of the paper in that era went even further in an earlier passage, urging squatters across Australia to emulate the mass killing of Native Americans. The Herald's coverage of the subsequent trials differed sharply from other newspapers, which took the position that Aboriginal Australians deserved protection under the law as British subjects.

  In 2023, the paper formally apologised for its coverage of the Myall Creek massacre and the trials of the perpetrators. The apology arrived nearly two centuries after the editorial positions it acknowledged. That same year, the Herald endorsed the Yes vote for the Australian Indigenous Voice referendum.

• 5. Editorial Positions Over Time

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  The contemporary stance of The Sydney Morning Herald is generally centrist. A 2004 editorial described the two broad themes guiding coverage as "market libertarianism and social liberalism." The paper has been described as the most centrist of Australia's three major national publications, alongside The Australian and The Age.

  The Herald's party endorsements tell a complicated story. For the first six decades of Australian federation, the paper consistently endorsed conservative parties for federal office and never backed Labor. It has since endorsed Labor in seven federal elections, including Gough Whitlam-era Labor in 1961, Bob Hawke in 1984 and 1987, Kevin Rudd in 2007, Julia Gillard in 2010, Bill Shorten in 2019, and Anthony Albanese in both 2022 and 2025.

  At the state level in New South Wales, the Herald has almost exclusively backed the Coalition since 1973. The sole exception was Bob Carr's Labor government in 2003. Internationally, the paper endorsed Hillary Clinton in the 2016 U.S. presidential election and Kamala Harris in 2024. In May 2023, the Herald also conducted a poll on Julian Assange's extradition to the United States, finding that 79 percent of respondents opposed it, and took an editorial position against the extradition.

• 6. Column 8 and the Reader's Paper

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  On the 11th of January 1947, a short column called Column 8 appeared in The Sydney Morning Herald for the first time. Its name came from its original location: the final, eighth column on the broadsheet's front page. Sydney Deamer created and wrote the column for 14 years, and its original logo was a caricature of him.

  The content of Column 8 leans toward the quirky: strange urban occurrences, confusing signs, word play, and loosely esoteric topics. The column is sometimes called Granny's Column, after a fictional grandmother said to have edited it. George Richards held the editor's role for 15 years, retiring on the 31st of January 2004. During preparations for the Sydney Olympic Games, the column moved from the front page to the back page of the first section on the 31st of July 2000.

  Good Weekend, the paper's Saturday magazine supplement, has its own long history. It launched in May 1978 as part of the Saturday Herald, then became a separate magazine supplement in October 1984, when it also began appearing in The Canberra Times. Its founding editor was Valerie Lawson. By 2012, a separate awards program called the Daily Life Woman of the Year had been created by Daily Life editor Sarah Oakes, inspired by the sexism directed at then-prime minister Julia Gillard; the first winner was Gillard herself.

• 7. Digital Shift and Ownership Today

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  In 1995, the Herald launched smh.com.au, one of the earlier newspaper websites in Australia. Around the same time, the organisation moved its offices from Jones Street to Darling Park and built a new printing press at Chullora. It later moved again to Darling Island, along with other Sydney Fairfax divisions.

  The 2012 restructure announced a freemium paywall model, limiting readers to a set number of free stories each month. The stated goal was digital integration, described as "full integration of its online, print and mobile platforms." The paper now publishes in compact print form Monday through Saturday and digitally seven days a week. On Sundays the print slot is occupied by The Sun-Herald.

  In November 2025, editor Bevan Shields resigned. Political editor Jordan Baker was named to take over at the start of 2026. The transition followed a 2022 incident in which the paper received significant global backlash after columnist Andrew Hornery attempted to out Australian actress Rebel Wilson; Wilson pre-empted the disclosure with her own Instagram post, and Shields publicly defended Hornery's since-deleted column. Baker, whose appointment was announced from within the paper's existing political reporting staff, represents the next chapter for a masthead that has been in continuous publication since 1831.