Type | Weekly newspaper |
---|---|
Format | Tabloid |
Owner(s) | Daily Mail and General Trust |
Publisher | DMG Media |
Editor | Geordie Greig |
Founded | May 2, 1982 |
Political alignment | Conservative |
Language | English |
Headquarters | Northcliffe House, 2 Derry Street, Kensington, London, U.K. |
Circulation | 1,284,121 (as of December 2016) |
ISSN | 0263-8878 |
Website | www |
The Mail on Sunday is a British conservative newspaper, published in a tabloid format. It was launched in 1982 by Lord Rothermere. Its sister paper, the Daily Mail, was first published in 1896.
In July 2011, after the closure of the News of the World, The Mail on Sunday sold some 2.5 million copies a week—making it Britain's biggest-selling Sunday newspaper—but by September that had fallen back to just under 2 million. Like the Daily Mail it is owned by the Daily Mail and General Trust (DMGT), but the editorial staffs of the two papers are entirely separate. It had an average daily circulation of 1,284,121 in December 2016.
The Mail on Sunday was launched on 2 May 1982, to complement the Daily Mail. The first story on the front page was the Royal Air Force's bombing of Port Stanley airport in the Falkland Islands. The newspaper's owner, the Daily Mail and General Trust (DMGT), initially wanted a circulation of 1.25 million; however, by that measure the launch of The Mail on Sunday was not a success, for by the sixth week sales were peaking at just 700,000. Its sports coverage was seen to be among its weaknesses at the time of its launch. The Mail on Sunday's first back-page splash was a report from the Netherlands on the rollerskating world championships, which led to the paper being ridiculed in the industry.
Lord Rothermere, then the proprietor, brought in the Daily Mail's editor David English (later Sir David) who, with a task force of new journalists, redesigned and re-launched The Mail on Sunday. Over a period of three-and-a-half months English managed to halt the paper's decline, and its circulation increased to 840,000. Three new sections were introduced: firstly a sponsored partwork, the initial one forming a cookery book; then a colour comic supplement (an innovation in the British Sunday newspaper market); and lastly, a magazine – You magazine.