| Type | Sunday newspaper |
|---|---|
| Format | originally tabloid, now broadsheet |
| Owner(s) | Tribune Newspapers PLC |
| Editor | Nóirín Hegarty |
| Founded | 1980, closed 1982. Relaunched 1983. |
| Political alignment | Left of Centre/Liberal |
| Headquarters | 15Baggot Street, Dublin 2 |
| Website | www.tribune.ie |
The Sunday Tribune is an broadsheet Irish Sunday newspaper published by Tribune Newspapers plc.
The newspaper was founded in 1980 by John Mulcahy as a tabloid with Conor Brady (later editor of The Irish Times) as its first editor. It was moderately successful but its growing financial stability (it had not yet made a profit but was moving it that direction) was undermined when its then owner, Hugh McLoughlin, launched the financially misjudged downmarket tabloid Daily News in 1982. The News proved to be a publishing disaster, with poor quality printing, bad distribution, and misjudged content, and pulled its sister paper, the Tribune, down with it within weeks. The Tribune went into receivership. The title was bought by Vincent Browne, who relaunched it as a broadsheet which he edited.
The paper became one of Ireland's most successful newspapers in the 1980s, eating into the market of The Sunday Press, which like other Press titles was hæmoraging readers through underfunding, an aging market and poor management decisions. Replicating McLoughlin's mistake of a decade earlier, against advice Browne launched a new sister paper, the Dublin Tribune, which collapsed pulling the Sunday Tribune down with it. It was saved from backruptcy by Sir Anthony O'Reilly's's Independent News and Media (then called Independent Newspapers plc), which acquired a 29.9% stake in the company. Even before the investment the relationship between Browne and the board of the company had been contentious. In the aftermath of the Dublin Tribune debacle he was sacked as editor.
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Independent Newspapers then made an offer to increase its stake to a majority level, however the Minister for Industry and Commerce, Desmond O'Malley, blocked the takeover attempt in 1992. Despite this, it is believed by many Irish business journalists that Independent Newspapers effectively control the Tribune via a series of loans. Matt Cooper was the editor of the newspaper from 1996 to 2002. Though the future of the newspaper has long thought to be uncertain it has continued to survive in the increasingly competitive Irish newspaper market. Its survival was helped by the collapse of the Irish Press group, which removed its highly popular Sunday Press from the Sunday market. Though many of its readers would not necessarily have been politically close to the Sunday Tribune, they were closer to it than the main alternative, the Sunday Independent.
It is often humourously referred to as "The Turbine", especially in the magazine "The Phoenix."
The newspaper's main Irish broadsheet Sunday competitors are the Sunday Independent and the Sunday Business Post, as well as the Irish edition of the UK Sunday Times.
