Sun rise depends on cut-price copies

The Sun is, by some margin, still Britain's best-selling daily paper. But the headline figure conceals a disturbing truth: sales can only be maintained by the willingness of its owner, Rupert Murdoch's News International, to sacrifice profits by selling more and more copies cheaply. Last month it sold 964,000 at a discount, compared to 644,000 in April 2007 and 400,000 in April 2006. Those figures are at the heart of my column in today's London Evening Standard.