Reports of the death of country newspapers are distinctly premature

Kristy McDonald was determined that her far south-west Victorian home town, Casterton – population 1700 – wouldn’t be deprived of its weekly newspaper.

She was editor of the Casterton News late last year when its owner, the Hamilton Spectator-Portland Observer Partnership, announced all its papers would close by Christmas.

She burst into tears. And got organised.

Kristy McDonald, new owner of the Casterton News.Credit: Casterton News

Today, McDonald is the owner of the Casterton News.

She is also editor, chief (and only) reporter, advertising sales manager and office cleaner.

On Mondays, she drives to Hamilton to pick up the 750 copies of her paper that have been printed in faraway Camperdown, and begins delivering them to distribution points in the villages of Coleraine, Digby and Merino, continues across the border to Mount Gambier, and finally gets back to Casterton. It’s a round trip of more than 250 kilometres.

An uncle drives 50 kilometres from Dartmoor to Casterton to pick up the papers for his town. The Digby publican and his wife observe a weekly date night in Portland each Monday, 70 kilometres south, and they deliver the Casterton papers on their way.

“We’re going gangbusters,” says Kristy. “Every week we have increased sales.”

Indeed, her operation has grown way beyond those printed newspapers.

Each week, the Casterton News appears within the website of a digital news operation, SE Voice, which she says gets 200,000 reader interactions a month.

The Portland Observer and Guardian was closed in December after covering local issues for 178 years. It has now been reborn.Credit: Tony Wright

“A farmer on his tractor can flick through the online paper at the start of the week and pick up the physical copy when he comes into town at the end of the week,” says McDonald.

SE Voice, it happens, was founded only four years ago by journalist Lechelle Earl when Mount Gambier’s newspaper, The Border Watch, closed.

The Border Watch has since reopened under new owners, but the independent SE Voice continues to thrive independently.

McDonald’s first teary phone call after the news of the impending closure of her newspaper was to Earl.

She had to make a big decision. The long-time principal of the Spectator partnership, Richard Beks, had urged McDonald to make a bid for her little paper. “What will I do?” McDonald asked.

Earl told McDonald to go ahead and buy the Casterton masthead, and promised she would do everything possible to help “future-proof” the operation.

Two weeks after the paper closed, McDonald had it up and running again. She says she will be eternally grateful to Beks for urging her to make that bid.

Reports of the death of small newspapers in western Victoria, it turns out, have proved distinctly premature.

Late last year, this column opined on the impending demise of several local newspapers of my long acquaintance.

“Unless new owners can be found quick smart, Victoria’s far, far south-west corner will be without any local newspapers by Christmas,” I wrote.

And sure enough, the Portland Observer and Guardian, where I began my career in journalism 55 years ago, its partner The Hamilton Spectator, and the Casterton News all closed in the week before Christmas.

Their departure from newsagents, supermarkets, general stores and the internet left a large crater in the lives of residents.

Generations had relied on them for sports reports, updates on council decisions, police efforts to keep crime as petty as possible, and the stretch of droughts, the depth of floods and the breadth of bushfires. They carried news of births, deaths and marriages, photographs from schools and agricultural shows, and all the other doings that add up to life in regional and rural communities.

And then, glory be, came the announcement that all these small papers had found saviours.

A company called SA Today, a subsidiary of Star News Group, which owns many local papers in Victoria, Queensland and South Australia, bought the Portland Observer and The Hamilton Spectator.

The Observer’s first edition under its new owners appeared only a week ago.

It carried a picture of my own grandchild, Charlie, who was photographed with her grandmother visiting the Portland library while on summer holiday.

Charlie, 5, was so overwhelmed by her picture in the paper, she announced that she was famous.

Her innocent delight reminded me that a local newspaper grants identity to those far from big cities.

Meanwhile, another group of small papers in Victoria’s west changed hands, too.

They were also purchased by staff members convinced their papers had a future.

WD News publishes the Camperdown Chronicle, Cobden Timboon Coast Times, Terang Express, Mortlake Dispatch, Warrnambool Weekly and the monthly Western District Farmer.

Taking on this considerable task – with just three journalists – are new owners Jodie Welsh and Stewart Esh.

Welsh started at WD News in 2006 as a journalist/photographer, and later took on the job of advertising manager.

Esh joined in 1988 as an apprentice compositor and became managing editor in 1999.

To round out their workload, they run one of the few printing presses left in country Victoria. Apart from their own publications, they print the Casterton News (yes, that one), the Nhill Free Press and Kaniva Times and North Central News.

I have a bit of an idea how confronting their challenges might be.

In 1973-74, aged 23, I was given the grand title of editor of Western District Newspapers and its Camperdown, Cobden, Terang and Mortlake mastheads.

Truth is, I knew next to nothing about the craft of editing a newspaper and lived the year in a state of panic.

Only the printers and linotype operators, who worked in a fug of hot-metal fumes, a manager who almost concealed his despair and the operators of an ancient press kept the show on the road.

Somehow, the papers always came out on time.

Readers couldn’t wait, we understood.

And every time someone predicts the end of country newspapers, there is someone like Kristy McDonald or Jodie Welsh and Stewart Esh, or those who own larger news groups, who know the truth of it.

Readers can’t wait. Happily, there are plenty of them still out there.