Mail on Sunday criticised for Sunday Tribune trick

The Mail on Sunday has been criticised for attracting Sunday Tribune readers by masquerading as its troubled rival.

The receiver was called in to the Sunday Tribune last week and the decision was made not to print the weekly paper until a new owner has been found.

Seeing an opportunity, the Mail printed some of its copies with the Sunday Tribune logo and page layout on the front, giving the impression to Tribune readers unaware of the Tribune’s difficulties that they were buying a copy of their regular paper.

The top of the front page declares that Sunday’s paper was “a special edition designed for readers of the Sunday Tribune”.

In a statement, the Mail said that it was simply trying to encourage people to carry on buying Irish Sunday newspapers, but the Tribune’s editor Noirin Hegarty was not buying this explanation, and encouraged ‘fair-minded’ newspaper buyers not to buy the Mail on Sunday.

Hegarty said she was “appalled and shocked” with the “front page lookalike of the Sunday Tribune with the naked ambition of getting extra circulation in an act of “shameless commercial vandalism” that aimed at burying the Tribune’s “still alive corpse”.