Focus and Content
The Sport did not focus on political news or world events, although in 2008 Lembit Opik (the former Liberal Democrat MP) began a regular weekly political column. Instead, its news coverage indulged more in yellow journalism, with an emphasis on celebrities, bad behaviour and toilet humour.
The Daily Sport and Sunday Sport were known for their ridiculous headlines that referred to fabricated stories, such as "World War Two Bomber Found on Moon". Later editorial practice meant an end to such stories and an increased focus on celebrity news and sexual revelations.
Daily Sport often published fake nude pictures of celebrities and also paparazzi 'upskirt' and 'downblouse' or nipple slip pictures. The fake nude pictures were published with the appropriate disclaimers and captions, although the front cover image was often accompanied by a titillating caption. In 2008 The Sport was criticised by the Press Complaints Commission for glamourising suicide by publishing a "Top yourself tourism list".
A large portion of advertising was for adult goods and services, such as phone-sex chat lines and Internet chat and cam sites. A feature of the paper was the classified advertisements, which in reality were a series of short advertisements for massage parlours and escort services across the country. In later years, the classified adverts had also become a place for swingers to advertise, as the swinging scene has grown.
The Sport claimed to have launched the careers of numerous models, among them Linsey Dawn McKenzie, who began posing topless for the newspaper in 1994, and Cherry Dee who began posing topless for them in 2003 when they were both 16 (the legal age for such activity in the UK at the time). Among recent popular Sport models were Kelly Bell, Hannah Claydon and Lauren Pope; however, very few Sport models also appeared in the other tabloids which the paper regarded as its rivals.
The Daily Sport and Sunday Sport were sold by David Sullivan to Sport Media Group in 2007. The papers were relaunched in April 2008 under the editorial leadership of Barry McIlheney and James Brown, the founder of loaded. In October 2008, Pam McVitie was appointed the first female editor of the Daily Sport. In 2009, SMG had to be bailed out by David Sullivan and Gold Group International, after having been put up for sale by its owners.
Read more about this topic: The Daily Sport
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