Mercury on Saturday
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| Type | Daily newspaper |
|---|---|
| Format | Tabloid |
| Owner(s) | News Corp Australia |
| Editor | Matt Deighton |
| Founded | 1854 |
| Headquarters | Level 1, 2 Salamanca Square, Hobart, Tasmania, Australia, 7000 |
| Circulation | 44,317 (Weekdays) 61,020 (Saturday) 58,148 (Sunday) |
| ISSN | 1039-9992 |
| Website | www.themercury.com.au |
The Mercury is a daily newspaper, published in Hobart, Tasmania, Australia, by Davies Brothers Pty Ltd, part of News Corp Australia and News Corp. The weekend issues of the paper are called Mercury on Saturday and Sunday Tasmanian.
The newspaper was started on 5 July 1854 by George Auber Jones and John Davies. Two months subsequently (13 September 1854) John Davies became the sole owner. It was then published twice weekly and known as the Hobarton Mercury. It rapidly expanded, absorbing its rivals, and became a daily newspaper in 1858 under the lengthy title The Hobart Town Daily Mercury. In 1860 the masthead was reduced to The Mercury and in 2006 it was further shortened to simply Mercury.
With the imminent demise of the (Launceston) Daily Telegraph, The Mercury, from March 1928, used the opportunity to increase their penetration there by expanding the branch office in the northern city, and by putting on "fast cars" to get the paper to Launceston by breakfast.
After Davies' retirement in 1871, the business was carried on by his sons John George Davies and Charles Ellis Davies who later traded as Davies Brothers Ltd. John Davies died on 11 June 1872, aged 58. The company remained in the family's hands until 1988, when it was taken over by News Limited (now News Corp Australia), a subsidiary of News Corporation. However, the subsidiary that owns the paper is still known as Davis Brothers Pty Ltd.
Other Tasmanian titles published by the company are the weekly rural newspaper Tasmanian Country, the weekly regional newspaper The Gazette, and the monthly travel magazine Treasure Island.
The Saturday Evening Mercury, known locally as the 'SEM' was printed and circulated for readers on a Saturday evening from 1954 to 1984, it was replaced in early 1984 by the first Sunday circulations in southern Tasmania, known as the Sunday Tasmanian which still exists today.
At various stages in its history there have been limited experiments with regional papers—such as The Westerner which succeeded The West Coast Miner in 1979 to serve the West Coast until its demise in 1995—as well as suburban newspapers for the Hobart market, which appeared in various guises from 1966 until 1998. In November 2006 the company launched what it called a "newspaper in a newspaper" the Kingborough Times which appears monthly within the Sunday Tasmanian. This was followed in June 2007 by the Northern Times with news from Hobart's northern suburbs.
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