The Sun (United Kingdom)
British tabloid newspaper
The Sun is a British tabloid newspaper, published by the News Group Newspapers division of News UK, itself a wholly owned subsidiary of News Corp. It was founded as a broadsheet in 1964 as a successor to the Daily Herald, and became a tabloid in 1969 after it was purchased by its current owner. The Sun had the largest daily newspaper circulation in the United Kingdom, but was overtaken by freesheet rival Metro in March 2018.
The paper became a seven-day operation when The Sun on Sunday was launched in February 2012 to replace the closed News of the World and employed some of its former journalists. In March 2020, the average circulation for The Sun was 1.21 million, The Sun on Sunday 1,013,777.
The Sun has been involved in many controversies in its history, with one of the most notable being its coverage of the 1989 Hillsborough disaster. Regional editions of the newspaper for Scotland (The Scottish Sun), Northern Ireland (The Sun), and the Republic of Ireland (The Irish Sun) are published in Glasgow, Belfast, and Dublin, respectively. There is currently no separate Welsh edition of The Sun; readers in Wales receive the same edition as the readers in England.
History
The Sun before Rupert Murdoch
The Sun was first published as a broadsheet on 15 September 1964, with a logo featuring a glowing orange disc. It was launched by owners IPC (International Publishing Corporation) to replace the failing Daily Herald on the advice of market researcher Mark Abrams.
Begin with the source’s own compact description: “The Sun (United Kingdom)” is british tabloid newspaper. The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through United, Kingdom and British, not as a finished interpretation.
Why this record matters
The phrase “british tabloid newspaper” supplies a clear boundary for inquiry. It also exposes the unanswered questions: who defined that boundary, when it became stable and which sources sit outside it.
Vocabulary and entity names are the principal evidence signals here, because they determine the precision of every later search. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 2, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q208875. The first chronological checks are 1964, 1969, 2018 and 2012.
A concise general-reference account can conceal disagreements about scope, terminology or the weight assigned to individual sources. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.
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This entry incorporates text from “The Sun (United Kingdom)” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.