of
Hiroshima, Japan. One of the early newspapers of the
Western Australian colony was
The Inquirer, established by Francis Lochee and William Tanner on 5 August 1840. Lochee became sole proprietor and editor in 1843 until May 1847 when he sold the operation to the paper's former
compositor Edmund Stirling. In July 1855,
The Inquirer merged with the recently established
Commercial News and Shipping Gazette, owned by
Robert John Sholl, as
The Inquirer & Commercial News. It ran under the joint ownership of Stirling and Sholl. Sholl departed and, from April 1873, the paper was produced by Stirling and his three sons, trading as Stirling & Sons. Edmund Stirling retired five years later and his three sons took control as Stirling Bros and Co, Ltd. Stirling Bros launched the
Daily News on 26 July 1882. After 28 June 1901,
The Inquirer & Commercial News was incorporated into the
Daily News. Competition from television evening news resulted in losses in circulation and eventual cessation of most Australian afternoon newspapers. The
Daily News came to be a wholly owned subsidiary of West Australian Newspapers (WAN), formerly itself a subsidiary of the Melbourne-based
Herald and Weekly Times organisation. In the late 1980s, WAN was acquired by the ill-fated
Bond Corporation's subsidiary
the Bell Group. In 1986, Robert Holmes à Court sold the
Daily News to a small company headed by businessman Simon Hadfield. The newspaper moved to a renovated pie factory on the outskirts of the CBD. On 2 May 1990, British publishing magnate
Robert Maxwell's UK-based
Mirror Group bought 14.9 per cent of Bell from the group's managing director, David Aspinall. However, the deal did not proceed, being opposed by the federal government under its media foreign ownership policy. The
Government of Western Australia legislated to retrospectively place the
Daily News beyond the jurisdiction of the (federal)
Trade Practices Commission—a move which the
Liberal Opposition condemned as prejudicial to Commonwealth-State relations. The paper was then defunct and in receivership, owing over $15 million, mainly to
The West Australian for production costs. The final issue of
Daily News was published on 11 September 1990. Former staff hold five-yearly reunions. WAN was the subject of a successful stock-market float in 1992, following closure of the
Daily News. ==Notable former journalists==