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The Australian, with its Saturday edition The Weekend Australian, is a daily newspaper in broadsheet format published by News Corp Australia since 14 July 1964. As the only Australian daily newspaper distributed nationally, its readership of both print and Online newspaper was 2,394,000. Its editorial line has been self-described over time as centre-right.Mitchell, Chris (9 March 2006). The Media Report . Australian Broadcasting Company.
The Australian integrates content from overseas newspapers owned by News Corp Australia's international owner News Corp, including The Wall Street Journal and The Times of London.
A Sunday edition, The Sunday Australian, was established in 1971. Events and issues that made the news in 1971 , National Archives of Australia It was discontinued in 1972, though, because press capacity was insufficient to print The Sunday Telegraph, the Sunday Mirror, and it. Time for a change , The Australian, 2014
The Australian's first editor was Maxwell Newton, before leaving the newspaper within a year, and was succeeded by Walter Kommer, and then by Adrian Deamer. Under Deamer's editorship, The Australian encouraged female journalists, and was the first mainstream daily newspaper to hire an Aboriginal reporter, John Newfong.
During the 1975 election, campaigning against the Whitlam government by its owner led to the newspaper's journalists striking over editorial direction.
Editor-in-chief Chris Mitchell was appointed in 2002 and retired on 11 December 2015; he was replaced by Paul Whittaker, formerly the editor-in-chief of Sydney's Daily Telegraph.
In May 2010, the newspaper launched the first Australian newspaper iPad application.
In October 2011, The Australian announced that it was planning to become the first general newspaper in Australia to introduce a paywall, with the introduction of a $2.95/week charge for readers to view premium content on its website, mobile phone, and tablet apps. The paywall was officially launched on 24 October, with a free 3-month trial.
In September 2017, The Australian launched a Chinese website.
In October 2018, Chris Dore, former editor of The Daily Telegraph, The Courier-Mail, and The Sunday Times (Western Australia) was announced as taking over as editor-in-chief. After Dore resigned in November 2022, the newspaper appointed its first female editor-in-chief, Michelle Gunn, in January 2023.
The editorial board began investigating a senior editor after allegations of misconduct were raised following events of the papers' Christmas drinks. The senior editor was accused of inappropriate conduct at the event by multiple female employees.
Since 2019, The Australian has published an annual study, called Australia's Richest 250, which ranks the country's wealthiest people from one to 250, in order of their net worth.
" The Australian has long maintained a focus on issues relating to Aboriginal disadvantage." It also devotes attention to the information technology, defence and mining industries, as well as the science, economics, and politics of climate change. It has also published numerous special reports into Australia's energy policy, legal affairs, and research sector. " The Australian special reports", The Australian
The Australian Literary Review was a monthly supplement from September 2006 to October 2011.
The tone and nature of The Australian's coverage has changed over time, but since the late 20th century under the ownership of Rupert Murdoch and with Chris Mitchell as editor-in-chief, it has taken a markedly conservative direction. It was outspoken in supporting the conservative government of Prime Minister John Howard.
In 2007, Crikey described the newspaper as generally in support of the Liberal Party of Australia and the then-Coalition government, but has pragmatically supported Labor governments in the past as well. In 2007, The Australian announced their support for Kevin Rudd of the Australian Labor Party in the Federal election. As of 2021, the last time the paper endorsed the Labor Party at any level, state or federal, was the 2010 Victorian election. Along with other Australian papers owned by News Ltd, The Australian has been highly and repeatedly critical of the Labor Party. "Australia's Murdoch moment: has News Corp finally gone too far?" by Gay Alcorn, The Guardian, 11 May 2019
The Australian presents varying views on climate change, including articles by those who disagree with the scientific consensus, such as Ian Plimer, and those who agree, such as Tim Flannery and Bjørn Lomborg. A 2011 study of the previous seven years of articles claimed that four out of every five articles were opposed to taking action on climate change.
In 2010, ABC's Media Watch presenter Paul Barry accused The Australian of waging a campaign against the Australian Greens, and the Greens' federal leader Bob Brown wrote that The Australian has "stepped out of the fourth estate by seeing itself as a determinant of democracy in Australia". In response, The Australian opined that "Greens leader Bob Brown has accused The Australian of trying to wreck the alliance between the Greens and Labor. We wear Senator Brown's criticism with pride. We believe he and his Green colleagues are hypocrites; that they are bad for the nation; and that they should be destroyed at the ballot box."
The Australian has been described by some media commentators and scholars as working to promote a right-wing agenda, and as a result, encouraging political polarisation in Australia. In August 2019, former The Australian journalist Rick Morton who left the paper earlier that year, reported in The Saturday Paper that an unpublished study by Victoria University, Melbourne, found that The Australian "fuels far-right recruitment" through dog whistle coded language. Victoria University issued a statement that "At no point does the research report claim that News Ltd publication fuelled far-right sentiment."
In late 2022, editor-in-chief Chris Dore resigned from The Australian citing health issues. After acting as editor-in-chief following the departure of Dore, Michelle Gunn become the first female editor-in-chief at the newspaper in January 2023. Gunn was replaced as editor by Kelvin Healey.
The following year, other media outlets also reported these issues and the policy turned into a political embarrassment for the government, which until then had been able to ignore The Australians reports. Along with the government's insulation stimulus policy, it contributed to criticisms, perceptions of incompetence, and general dissatisfaction with the government's performance.
On 16 July 2010, Julia Gillard was reported to have admitted that the school-building program was flawed and that errors had been made because the program was designed in haste to protect jobs during the Great Recession.
On 18 August 2012, Hedley Thomas reported that Gillard had left her job as a partner with law firm Slater & Gordon as a direct result of a secret internal investigation in 1995 into corrupt conduct on behalf of her then-boyfriend Ralph Blewett. The story was ignored for a long time by other media outlets until after Gillard held a press conference to respond to the allegations against her. In 2013, the Fair Work Commission commenced initial inquiries into allegations of improper union financial conduct, and the government initiated a judicial inquiry into the AWU affair in December of that year as part of a royal commission into trade unions.
Stuart Rintoul (active from around 1989) was a senior writer with The Australian, with some expertise in Indigenous languages and history. His 2020 book Lowitja: The Authorised Biography of Lowitja O'Donoghue, a biography of Indigenous Australian trailblazer Lowitja O'Donoghue, was shortlisted for a Walkley Award for Best Non-Fiction Book, and was highly commended in the National Biography Awards in 2021.
Columnists include Janet Albrechtsen, Troy Bramston, Henry Ergas, Ticky Fullerton, Antonella Gambotto-Burke, Adam Creighton, Robert Gottliebsen, Gideon Haigh, Paul Kelly, Chris Kenny, Brendan O'Neill, Nicolas Rothwell, Angela Shanahan, Dennis Shanahan, Greg Sheridan, Judith Sloan, Cameron Stewart, Peter van Onselen, Graham Richardson, Peta Credlin, and Claire Lehmann. It also features daily cartoons from Johannes Leak and John Spooner.
Occasional contributors include Gregory Melleuish, Kevin Donnelly, Caroline Overington, Tom Switzer, James Allan, Hal G.P. Colebatch, Luke Slattery, Noel Pearson, Bettina Arndt, Julia Gillard, Tony Abbott, and Lucian Boz.
Contributors to The Weekend Australian Magazine and Review in The Weekend Australian include Phillip Adams, national art critic Christopher Allen, actor and writer Graeme Blundell, Jeremy Clarkson, Antonella Gambotto-Burke, author Trent Dalton, author Nikki Gemmell, poet Sarah Holland-Batt, and demographer Bernard Salt. Film critic David Stratton retired in December 2023.
the weekday edition circulation was 104,165 and the weekend edition was 230,182, falling 6.5% and 3.3%, respectively, compared to the same period in 2014. ''The Australian'' had 67,561 paid digital subscribers in the same period.
according to third-party [[web analytics]] providers [[Alexa|Alexa Internet]] and [[Similarweb]], ''The Australian''s website was the 72nd- and 223rd-most visited websites in Australia, respectively. SimilarWeb rates the site as the 23rd-most visited news website in Australia, attracting almost 3 million visitors per month.
In June 2018, according to Roy Morgan Research, The Australian had a readership of 292,000 for the Monday–Friday editions and 576,000 for the Saturday edition.
In June 2019, Roy Morgan reported figures of 851,000 (June 2018: 831,000) for the print version (total, weekend, and weekday editions); digital versions 1,965,000 (June 2018: 1,965,000); total cross-platform 2,421,000 (June 2018: 2,564,000). (By way of comparison, The Sydney Morning Herald total figure was 4,125,000; The Age (Melbourne) 2,782,000, Herald Sun (Melbourne) 2,729,000. The only other nationally distributed daily newspaper, the business-focused Australian Financial Review, had 1,587,000 cross-platform readers.)
The paper had a 4-week-reach in June 2024 of 1.82 million in print, 3.56 million on its digital platform, and 4.06 million cross-platform.
In the 2nd IT Journalism Awards in 2004, The Australian won the top award, Best Title ("Gold Lizzy"), as well as three other awards.
The paper has won Pacific Area Newspaper Publishers' Association awards on several occasions:
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