Daily Star (United Kingdom)
| File:DailyStar.jpg | |
| Format | Tabloid |
|---|---|
| Owner(s) | Richard Desmond |
| Publisher | Northern and Shell Media |
| Editor | Dawn Neesom |
| Founded | 2 November 1978 |
| Political alignment | Right wing |
| Headquarters | 10 Lower Thames Street, London EC3R 6EN |
| Circulation | 768,534[1] |
| Website | www.dailystar.co.uk |
The Daily Star is a daily British tabloid newspaper. It was first published on 2 November 1978, and was the first new national paper to be launched since the Daily Mirror in 1903. For many years it published Monday to Saturday but on 15 September 2002 it expanded to bring out a Sunday edition, the Daily Star Sunday, which is edited by Gareth Morgan. On 31 October 2009 the paper published its 10,000th issue.
The paper was launched from Manchester and initially circulated only in the North and Midlands. It was conceived by the then-owners of Express Newspapers, Trafalgar House, to take on the strength of the Daily Mirror and Sun in the north. It was also intended to utilise the under-capacity of the Great Ancoats Street presses in Manchester as the Daily Express was losing circulation. The Daily Star sold out its first night print of 1,400,000.
The Daily Star is published by Express Newspapers, which also publishes the Daily Express and Sunday Express. The group is now owned by Richard Desmond's Northern and Shell company. The paper focuses on stories largely revolving around celebrities, sport, and news and gossip about popular television programmes, such as soap operas and reality TV shows.
The editorial stance of the Star's hard news articles is predominantly right wing, dealing with such issues as asylum seekers and teenage anti-social behaviour in a populist manner.
Its editor is Dawn Neesom. She was promoted to the post in December 2003 after the previous editor, Peter Hill, moved to become editor of the Daily Express. Previously she had been an executive on the paper in charge of the features department.
Regular features
The newspaper features a photograph of a topless model on weekdays (in a similar vein to The Sun's Page 3 feature) and has discovered some well known models, most notably Rachel Ter Horst in 1993, and Lucy Pinder on a Bournemouth beach in Summer 2003. Such models as Cherry Dee and Michelle Marsh have also appeared on their page 3. These women are known in the paper as "Starbabes". The paper's glamour photographer is Jeany Savage.
Other regular features in the Daily Star include The Goss, a daily gossip column edited by Jess Brown, Playlist, a daily music news column edited by Kim Dawson, Star TV, a television news column edited by Peter Dyke and Katie Begley, Mike Ward's weekly TV review page and Forum, a daily page devoted to readers' text messages, which are apparently printed verbatim. Opinion columns by Dominik Diamond and Vanessa Feltz were discontinued in 2008.
The paper's leader column, entitled The Daily Star Says, appears most days on Page 6.
Beau Peep is the daily strip cartoon.
Controversy
Jeffrey Archer
In 1987, the newspaper lost a high profile libel action brought by Jeffrey Archer, leading to an award of £500,000 in damages, over allegations of Archer's involvement with Monica Coghlan. The editor of the Daily Star, Lloyd Turner, was sacked six weeks after the trial. However the newspaper always stood by its story, and on 19 July 2001 Archer was found guilty of perjury and perverting the course of justice at the 1987 trial and was sentenced to a total of four years' imprisonment. The paper later launched a bid to reclaim £2.2m - the original payout plus interest and damages.[2]
Madeleine McCann
Both the Daily Star and its Sunday equivalent, as well as its stablemates the Daily Express and Sunday Express, have featured heavy coverage of the missing toddler Madeleine McCann. In 2008 the McCann family sued the Star and Express for libel following the newspapers' coverage of the case. The action concerned more than 100 stories across the Daily Express, Daily Star and their Sunday equivalents, which accused the McCanns of involvement in their daughter's disappearance. The newspapers' coverage was regarded by the McCanns as grossly defamatory. In a settlement at the High Court of Justice, the newspapers agreed to run a front-page apology to the McCanns on 19 March 2008, publish another apology on the front pages of the Sunday editions on 23 March and make a statement of apology at the High Court. They also agreed to pay costs and substantial damages, which the McCanns plan to use to aid their search for their daughter.[3] In its apology, the Daily Star apologised for printing "stories suggesting the couple were responsible for, or may be responsible for, the death of their daughter Madeleine and for covering it up" and stated that "We now recognise that such a suggestion is absolutely untrue and that Kate and Gerry are completely innocent of any involvement in their daughter's disappearance."[4]
Volcanic ash front page
On 21 April, in the aftermath of the 2010 Eyjafjallajökull eruption, the Star splashed a computer-generated image on its front page of 1982's British Airways Flight 9, which encountered volcanic ash and suffered the temporary loss of all engines. The image, taken from a documentary, was accompanied by a screaming headline "Terror as plane hits ash cloud", without any indication on the front page that the image and event was a historical one.[5] The splash, on the first day that flights restarted after a six-day closure of UK airspace due to volcanic ash, led to the removal of the paper from newsagents at some UK airports.[6]
Editors
Daily Star
- 1978: Derek Jameson
- 1980: Lloyd Turner
- 1987: Mike Gabbert. He was brought in to take the paper downmarket, which he did. He had a very short tenure as circulation dropped dramatically. He was the journalist that had exposed the Sheffield Wednesday trio of Swan, Layne and Kay for match fixing in the 1960s.
- 1987: Brian Hitchen
- 1994: Phil Walker
- 1998: Peter Hill
- 2003: Dawn Neesom
Daily Star Sunday
- 2002: Hugh Whittow
- 2003: Gareth Morgan
See also
References
- ^ Luft, Oliver (6 February 2009). "Audit Bureau Circulations, Jan 2009". London: Media Guardian. Retrieved 2009-03-04.
- ^ Raphael, Adam (1989). My Learned Friends: an Insider's View of the Jeffrey Archer Case and Other Notorious Actions. ISBN 9781852270940.
- ^ "Damages due over McCann stories". BBC News Online. 18 March 2008.
- ^ "Kate & Gerry McCann: Sorry". Daily Star. 19 March 2008.
- ^ The lead stated: "Exclusive: This is the moment a British Airways jumbo jet hit a cloud of volcanic ash at 37,000ft. Yet last night all UK airports finally reopened, in spite of the ash cloud." The full story was published on page six. See: "Wall, Emma (2010-04-21). "Drama as airlines fly again". Daily Star. p. 6. Retrieved 2010-05-13.
- ^ Plunkett, John (2010-04-21). "Daily Star pulled from airports over volcano ash splash". The Guardian. Retrieved 2010-05-13.
External links
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