Sun on Sunday

The Sun on Sunday newspaper has gone on sale for the first time.

About three million copies are believed to have been printed, and the company hopes well over two million will be sold.

The newspaper’s owner, Rupert Murdoch, visited printworks in Broxbourne, Hertfordshire, to oversee production of the first edition.

News International closed its Sunday paper, the News of the World, last year amid the scandal over phone hacking.

The editor of the daily edition of the Sun, Dominic Mohan, will also be in charge of the new Sunday edition. He is understood to have met Mr Murdoch at the press production site on Saturday evening.

Under the headline “the Sun will come out tomorrow”, Saturday’s paper described the launch of the 50p title as a “brilliant new era for the Sun”.

‘Old favourites’

The paper features new columnists, including model Katie Price and chef Heston Blumenthal, Archbishop of York, John Sentamu, “fashion expert” Nancy Dell’Olio and political writer Toby Young.

The paper also features “old favourites” such as Dear Deidre, Mystic Meg, Bizarre and TV Biz.

Saturday’s Sun described the launch as a “brilliant new era”

The Sun said “thousands of copies” had been ordered for British forces overseas, which will be flown to bases in Afghanistan, the Falkland Islands and elsewhere.

Clutching a first edition of the newspaper, BBC correspondent Nick Higham said it was not a good time to be launching a Sunday newspaper as the market had fallen some 6.5 million copies in the last 10 years to 7.8 million copies a week.

He said: “The market for newspapers gets significantly smaller with every week that passes… which makes the launch of the Sun on Sunday a defiant gesture of faith in the future of newspapers.”

Media commentator Steve Hewlett said the new enterprise was likely to be a commercial success.

“The News of the World used to sell 2.6 million copies or thereabouts. When they closed it 1.3 million ended up with other newspapers, the Mirror being the primary beneficiary, but the Star and the People (benefited) as well. But 1.3 million disappeared,” he told the BBC News Channel.

“The Sun starts from a position of being the biggest-selling daily tabloid – 2.7 million copies sold a day and a readership of six to seven million – so from that platform, if the Sun get the package right, it ought to work.”

Mr Hewlett described the move to launch the title as a “weekend’s welcome distraction” for News International chief executive Rupert Murdoch, amid the Leveson Inquiry into press ethics and police investigation into phone hacking.

The probe has led to 30 arrests so far, among them 10 current and former senior staff at the Sun.

An editorial in the first edition of the new Sunday newspaper reads: “We believe those individuals are innocent until proven guilty.

“It has been a sobering experience for our entire industry.”

The editorial adds that the paper had been a “tremendous force for good”.

The paper also announced that it will have an independent Sun Readers’ Champion “to accept feedback and correct significant errors”.

Mr Murdoch tweeted on Friday: “The Sun: great speculation, sweeps, etc on Sunday’s sale. I will be very happy at anything substantially over two million!”

Mr Murdoch flew to London last week and told staff at the Sun of his plans to launch the Sun on Sunday tabloid.

Last year the 168-year-old News of the World was closed following revelations that staff employed by the newspaper hacked the phones of public figures.