The Melbourne Age is a long running newspaper based in Melbourne, Australia. It has been running since 1855, and was founded by three Melburnian businessmen. It is a broadsheet newspaper, meaning that is much larger than the usual tabloid style newspapers such as the Herald Sun. The Melbourne Age, or as it is more commonly known, The Age, is now owned by Fairfax.
The Age was not initially a successful newspaper. After only one year of publication, it was sold off quite early on in its life. At that point it was explicitly a liberal newspaper, and stated in no uncertain terms that it was to be considered this way. With this view, and with its influential owners, The Age had a large influence on politics in the 1850s and the following years.
However, The Melbourne Age began to lose ground to other more tabloid style newspapers. Many considered it to be outdated in appearance and content. These other more populist newspapers began to dominate the field of journalism in Melbourne and the state of Victoria. It wasn't until the demise of rival newspaper Argus that The Age began to return to a stronger position.
In 1966, Fairfax bought a section of The Age shares, and in 1983 bought out the rest of the business. It remains owned by Fairfax to this day. Fairfax also owns another major newspaper, The Sydney Morning Herald, published in Sydney and New South Wales. However, it was argued at the time that the two were natural competitors, and the large resources of Fairfax were able to be drawn upon to keep the newspaper in business and developing.
There are two different editions of the daily newspaper the are printed. One is aimed at metropolitan Melbourne readers, while the other is aimed at rural and regional readers. The different versions have different emphasis on certain types of content. There are also special weekend editions that contain a number of lift outs and magazines. A variety of special lift outs can also be found within the weekly edition. These include the well known Green Guide, which is a green colored television guide that also includes in depth reviews of films and television shows.
The Melbourne Age is commonly considered as a fairly liberal newspaper in terms of its politics. However, The Age now syndicates much of its material from news sources such as Reuters, meaning that it does not publish as much material that is slanted in a particular way. There are a number of high quality and well regarded journalists who contribute to the newspaper. However, there exist concerns about how well The Age will continue to perform with new online competition. The online version of The Age is considerably more populist in style and content than the print version, perhaps to woo readers of the net generation. For example, it contains many videos and pictorials, and offers a lot of commentary in the format of blogs. Readers are encouraged to comment on and repurpose information. This is quite different from the more sober style of the print Age, which is much more formal in tone and presentation.
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