About PerthNow

PerthNow

PerthNow is Western Australia's most popular news website, publishing local, national and international news, sport, entertainment and lifestyle from Perth at perthnow.com.au. Launched in June 2006 as the online arm of The Sunday Times, it has grown from a newspaper companion site into a standalone digital brand that now also lends its name to a network of free suburban newspapers across the Perth metropolitan area. It is owned by Seven West Media, the group behind the Seven Network and The West Australian.

Overview

PerthNow operates as a mass-market digital news service with a distinctly Western Australian identity. Its daily output spans breaking news, crime, politics, business, sport, celebrity and entertainment, property, motoring and lifestyle, delivered in a fast, tabloid-influenced style designed for high-volume online readership. The site draws on the combined reporting resources of Seven West Media in Western Australia — including The West Australian newspaper, the 7NEWS Perth television newsroom and the group's radio assets — giving it a newsgathering footprint few local competitors can match. The company has described it as WA's number one news and entertainment website, attracting a unique monthly audience of more than 2.8 million browsers. Beyond the website, the PerthNow brand extends to print: a network of free weekly suburban newspapers, PerthNow Local, covering the metropolitan area from Yanchep in the north to Coogee in the south, with a combined print platform reaching more than 530,000 readers per month.

History

PerthNow was launched in June 2006 by The Sunday Times as an online presentation of local news from News Limited, the then owner of the Sunday paper. It arrived early in the Australian newspaper industry's digital transition, establishing a web-native presence for Sunday journalism in a state where the Sunday Times had long been the dominant weekend title. In its first decade the site grew steadily: by March 2016 the analytics provider Alexa ranked perthnow.com.au as the 233rd most visited website in Australia, while SimilarWeb rated it the 32nd most visited news website in the country.

The ownership turning point came in 2016. On 7 November that year Seven West Media confirmed it had signed a definitive contract to acquire The Sunday Times newspaper and the PerthNow website from News Corporation, a deal approved by the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission in September and completed within days of the announcement. Seven West Media described the investment as earnings-accretive in its first year. The first edition of The Sunday Times under Seven West Media ownership appeared on 20 November 2016, with Walkley Award-winning journalist Michael Beach — then deputy editor of The West Australian and head of digital content for Seven West Media WA — appointed editor, and editorial staff from The Sunday Times and PerthNow absorbed into West Australian Newspapers. The deal also built a news content-sharing agreement between The West Australian and News Corporation's daily mastheads in Adelaide, Brisbane, Melbourne, Sydney, Hobart and the Northern Territory, with News Corp representing the Sunday Times and PerthNow advertising in east coast markets.

The brand's next expansion came in print rather than pixels. In 2021 Seven West Media announced it would retire the Community Newspaper Group brand — the long-running stable of suburban papers, in which Seven West Media had bought out its joint-venture partner in 2019 — and relaunch the products as free weekly PerthNow newspapers. The new papers were split into ten localised editions stretching from Yanchep to Coogee, focused on local stories in a new format while continuing the Community group's tradition of suburban scoops and investigations; the Community websites had already transitioned onto PerthNow six months earlier. The first editions hit letterboxes, shops and cafes in early August. The company's WA advertising chief framed the move as a bold integrated offering of print and digital hyperlocal opportunities at a time when community newspapers were closing around the country. In the years since, Seven West Media itself has been transformed: after acquiring Southern Cross Austereo's regional Seven affiliate stations in 2025, it completed a merger with Southern Cross Media Group in January 2026 and was delisted from the ASX.

Content and Programming

The website's editorial formula is built for volume and velocity. News teams publish across the day, with breaking stories — particularly crime, traffic, weather and developing incidents — updated continuously. Sport is a cornerstone: coverage of the West Coast Eagles and Fremantle Dockers in the AFL, Perth Glory, the Western Force, the Perth Wildcats and WA cricket sits alongside national and international sport from the Seven network. Entertainment and lifestyle content spans celebrity news, television, food, property, parenting and money, while the site's community debating and storytelling features encourage reader participation. The PerthNow Local newspapers extend the brand into hyperlocal journalism, with ten mastheads covering the sprawling metropolitan area and editors tasked with knowing where to take each story at a local level. Video is integrated throughout, drawing on 7NEWS Perth's television output, and the brand maintains a large social media following that amplifies its stories well beyond the website's direct traffic.

Coverage and Audience

PerthNow serves Perth and Western Australia first, with national and international news providing the wider context. Its audience leadership in the state rests on a combination of the website's scale — more than 2.8 million unique monthly browsers, in the company's figures — and the PerthNow Local print network's reach of over half a million monthly readers. The brand competes in Western Australia with the online services of The West Australian and with Nine Publishing's WAtoday, but its tabloid sensibility and entertainment weighting give it a distinct position: populist, fast and visually driven, aimed at a broad mainstream audience rather than the subscriber-seeking broadsheet reader. The integration with Seven West Media's television, newspaper and radio assets means PerthNow stories can move across platforms, from a 7NEWS Perth bulletin to the website to the suburban papers, multiplying their reach within the state.

Ownership

PerthNow is owned by Seven West Media, the Perth-headquartered media group whose assets include the Seven Network, The West Australian, The Sunday Times, 7NEWS, the 7plus streaming service and a suite of digital properties. The title entered the group through the November 2016 acquisition from News Corporation, and its subsequent growth — including the PerthNow Local newspaper network — has been funded and directed from within the group's Western Australian division. In January 2026 Seven West Media completed its merger with Southern Cross Media Group and was delisted from the Australian Securities Exchange, making PerthNow part of one of the largest regional and metropolitan media combinations in the country. The commercial model is advertising-led: display, video and native advertising sold against the site's mass Western Australian audience, complemented by the print advertising of the PerthNow Local newspapers and the group's cross-platform packages for WA advertisers.

Digital Presence

The perthnow.com.au website is the brand's digital flagship, optimised for mobile and desktop with breaking-news alerts, live updates, video and deep sectional content. Its social media accounts command a large following and function as a primary distribution channel, particularly for breaking news and entertainment stories. The brand's digital footprint is reinforced by its integration with the Seven West Media ecosystem: stories and video flow between PerthNow, 7NEWS, thewest.com.au and the 7plus streaming service, and the PerthNow Local newspapers drive readers back to the site for developing stories. From a 2006 newspaper companion site to a multi-platform brand spanning the state's most-visited news website and ten suburban newspapers, PerthNow's digital presence reflects two decades of adaptation to how Western Australians actually consume news.