Thursday, October 23, 2025
Editor Ash Long says: Welcome to Local Media Pty Ltd, publishers of the Melbourne Observer and The Local Paper. Local Media Pty Ltd has its origins in 1969 when the first copies of the Melbourne Observer rolled off the presses, as Victoria’s first Sunday newspaper. More than half a century later, the Melbourne Observer continues as Victoria’s independent…
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Read our 60-page booklet on the traditions of our local newspapers. https://issuu.com/mediaflash/docs/localmediabook23
Read More about NEW. Local Media: 150 Years of Local Press Traditions
The 2023 Media Kit for The Local Paper and Melbourne Observer newspapers has been released.View a copy here:https://issuu.com/mediaflash/docs/mediakit3
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The Melbourne Observer is Victoria’s weekly independent newspaper. The Melbourne Observer is available inside the Local Paper, which is published in localised editions across 40 local government areas. You can also read the newspaper, free, at the Melbourne Observer website.
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The Local Paper is a free, community newspaper available in localised editions, across 40 Victorian local government areas, available free through hundreds of outlets. You can also read the newspaper, free, at The Local Paper website.
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Local Media Pty Ltd Editorial Guidelines and Code of Conduct Local Media Pty Ltd is an independent Australian media company, delivering local news on a number of platforms including print, internet and social media. Our editorial coverage is underscored by the ongoing commitment for accuracy, fairness and accountability. Our news columns include fact-based reporting, with…
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We are on duty, 7 days a week Contact us on Free Call 1800 231 311. If we are out on an assignment, please leave a message on our voice mail, and we will return your call promptly. Head Office (same address for past 28 years): 30 Glen Gully Road, Eltham, Vic 3095 Phone: 1800…
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Heritage newspaper names have been adopted for many of the local editions of The Local Paper. The masthead titles pay homage to the traditions of long, established newspapers that have served local communities over the past 150 years. The newspapers are today published under The Local Paper brand by Local Media Pty Ltd. The Local Paper commenced weekly editions on…
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Local Media Pty Ltd produces the Mitchell Shire Edition of The Local Paper. Our company’s progenitors established editions of The Chronicle in Seymour, Kilmore and Broadford in the late 1980s-early 1990s against the established Free Press newspaper. But it gave us no joy to see the Smith family have to relinquish ownership of that newspaper in 2006, and to see the Kilmore…
Read More about Opposition Kilmore Free Press implodes after 140 years
Ash Long has been the Proprietor of Local Media Pty Ltd since 2002. His links with the company’s Melbourne Observer newspaper go back to 1969, more than 50 years ago. As a 12-year-old newsboy, Ash Long started in the first weeks of the Sunday Observer newspaper, delivering newspapers around the Housing Commission areas of Reservoir and East Preston. It…
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Victorian publisher Peter Isaacson purchased the Sunday Observer newspaper in 1977. At the start of the newspaper’s life in September 1969, Isaacson (along with Progress Press and Waverley Offset Printers) had been a contract printer of the Observer under the proprietorships of Gordon Barton and Maxwell Newton, until each of them took possession of their own presses….
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After his publishing empire had collapsed in the mid-1970s, Observer publisher Maxwell Newton moved to America and restored his career. Maxwell Newton was described by Jim Grant, is his Grant’s Interest Rate Observer (Oct. 22, 1984): “By 1977, his net worth was $3 million or so at the top. He was re-building his fortunes in pornographic books…
Read More about Maxwell Newton. After the Sunday Observer. Part 2
Just 2½ years on from Maxwell Newton’s launch of the Melbourne Observer newspaper on March 20, 1971, his major opponents – The Herald and Weekly Times Ltd and David Syme & Co. Ltd – joined together to start the Sunday Press newspaper (cover price 15 cents). Its final edition was published on August 13, 1989. An early editor was…
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The rapid growth of the Melbourne Observer newspaper was reported upon by Norman Thompson of The Review on July 22, 1972: The enigmatic Max Newton has set Melbourne newspaper circles abuzz with plans to upgrade his Sunday paper, the Melbourne Observer. Newton has signed up one of Australia’s most highly-paid journalists, Walkley winner John Sorell of the Melbourne Herald,…
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Within two weeks of the closure of Gordon Barton’s Sunday Observer newspaper in March 1971, publisher Maxwell Newton hit the streets with his Melbourne Observer newspaper. Newton was editorially equipped for the task: he had been Editor of The Australian Financial Review (Fairfax) when it went daily; he had been foundation Editor of The Australian national broadsheet for Rupert Murdoch seven years earlier…
Read More about Maxwell Newton. Proprietor 1971-1977. Part 1
The appearance of Maxwell Newton’s Melbourne Observer newspaper in March 1971 caught the attention of the Batman’s Melbourne columnist (Keith Dunstan) in The Bulletin magazine. “As a good Melburnian I have never got over the sense of sin regarding Sunday newspapers. Oh, admittedly they have been coming over from Sydney for years now, but I have always…
Read More about How the pure Sunday disappeared in Melbourne
Local Media Pty Ltd, current-day publisher of the Melbourne Observer and The Local Paper network, can trace its beginnings to the first days of the Sunday Observer and Nation Review newspapers. The Sunday Observer newspaper was established in Melbourne by businessman Gordon Barton (IPEC) on September 14, 1969. The Sunday Review (later The Review and then Nation Review) first hit the streets on October 11, 1970. Local Media Pty Ltd…
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Nation Review was a central part of Australian politics in the early 1970s, and Local Media pioneer Ash Long was there at the beginning. The weekly Sunday Review newspaper was founded on Sunday, October 11, 1970, and the family of Ash Long (then aged 13) had a part-time newspaper distribution business for Gordon Barton’s Melbourne Sunday Observer. It would…
Read More about Like a Ferret, lean and nosey
The Sunday Observer newspaper of March 1, 1970, became part of the story when the paper’s owner, Gordon Barton, funded the flight of banned journalist Wilfred Burchett back into Australia. News Editor Bill Green wrote the front-page story of how Burchett was flown into Brisbane in a chartered air craft ending years of attempts to return to his…
Read More about Observer helps ‘Public Enemy Number One’
‘Race For Local Football Pools’ announced the first front-page of the Observer, as it hit the streets on Sunday, September 14, 1969. The newspaper, in its first edition, speculated that British football pools organisation, Littlewoods, could mount a challenge to operate football lotteries based on the big English pools. Tattersalls held the monopoly for gambling…
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IPEC transport magnate Gordon Barton published the first issue of the Melbourne Sunday Observer on September 14, 1969. It was Melbourne’s first regular Sunday newspaper. (Michael Michaeledes, who ran the Greek newspaper Torch , officially took the honours by publishing the Sunday Post, which lasted for seven editions. Dern Langlands started his weekly Postscript Weekender newspaper in August 1969….
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The first issue of the Sunday Observer (Sep. 14, 1969) was critiqued by The Canberra Times. Newspaperman Rohan Rivett (picturede) assembled the report. He was the elder son of Sir David Rivett, and his wife Stella (née Deakin). He was a grandson of the former Prime Minister of Australia, Alfred Deakin, and of the Rev. Albert Rivett (1855-1934), a…
Read More about ‘Features, sport, but no scoops’
Local Media Pty Ltd publishes a local Waverley Gazette/Monash Gazette edition of The Local Paper. The newspaper commenced publication as the Glen Gazette on Februray 8, 1961, under the auspicies of the Coleman-Kingsway Traders’ Association. The new paper filled the gap of the Mulgrave Mercury, established on November 4, 1949, and absorbed in the South Eastern Standard News-Pictorial from February 25, 1960….
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When Leader Newspapers ceased print production of The Free Press in the Dandenongs in 2016, Local Media Pty Ltd quickly commenced publication of The New Free Press in the following week (July 7, 2016). The commencement of The New Free Press was done with the blessing of News Corp., owners of the Leader group, which continued an online presence under…
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Local Media Pty Ltd publishes a local Diamond Valley News edition of The Local Paper. The name Diamond Valley News was first used in 1959, after the Heidelberg Publishing Co. Pty Ltd was formed as a partnership between Leader Publishing Co., and the publishers of the Heidelberg City News. Development of The Mall retail centre at West Heidelberg following the…
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Local Media Pty Ltd publishes Frankston and Mornington Peninsula editions of The Local Paper. It incorporates the traditions of the Mornington Peninsula Post, Southern Peninsula Gazette and the Hastings Sun. The Peninsula Post began in 1913 as a re-plated edition of the Frankston Post The Mornington Standard was born on October 5, 1889, at a time when the town’s population was 794. William Crawford Jnr…
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Local Media Pty Ltd publishes local Northcote, Budget, Preston Post, Reservoir Times and Whittlesea Post editions of The Local Paper. The Northcote Budget heritage name is linked to the Leader-Budget newspaper that was produced in the City of Northcote from 1936-1966. The Northcote Leader had its beginnings on January 21, 1888, produced by R. Lemon and brothers (The Rev.) A.H. ‘Henry’ and…
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Local Media Pty Ltd publishes a local Lilydale and Yarra Valley Express edition of The Local Paper. The Lilydale Express was first published in July 1886 by William Axford, originally as a bi-weekly (Wednesdays and Saturdays, then changing to Fridays). It had the sub-title of the Healesville, Wandin, Yallock, Yarra Flats, Warrandyte, Ringwood and Eltham Chronicle. It stated its circulation…
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Local Media Pty Ltd publishes a regional edition of The Local Paper across the Murrindindi Shire, also circulating in the rural areas of the Mansfield, Nillumbik and Whittlesea municipalities. The first edition of The Local Paper appeared in some sections of the Murrindindi Shire (Flowerdale, Glenburn, Strath Creek, Yarck, Yea) and Whittlesea on February 17, 2016. It expanded rapidly…
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Local Media Pty Ltd publishes the Casey-Cardinia edition of The Local Paper. It incorporates the traditions of the Cranbourne Sun and the Dandenong Advertiser.The Mornington County Herald was established on March 22, 1889. The Koo-Wee-Rup Sun and Cranbourne Sun commnced in 1893. The Lang Lang Guardian, from February 22, 1902, was owned variously by J.C. Ryan, H. Furze, T. Henderson, G.F. Hopkins, the last named…
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Local Media Pty Ltd publishes a local Diamond Valley News edition of The Local Paper. The origin of the Diamond Valley News name is published HERE The earliest chapter of local press history in the Diamond Valley can be traced to October 31, 1873, with the first issue of the Evelyn Observer, published from a school house at Kangaroo Ground. The…
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Local Media Pty Ltd publishes a local Southern Cross Weekly edition of The Local Paper. It circulates in the municipalities of Bayside, Boroondara, Glen Eira, Kingston, Melbourne, Port Phillip, Stonnington and Yarra. It incorporates the traditions of the Southern Cross newspaper. John Stott published the first issue on Saturday, February 27, 1871 on a single sheet of paper folded into four…
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