About Port Macquarie News

Port Macquarie News

Port Macquarie News is a regional newspaper published in Port Macquarie, New South Wales, serving the Hastings region of the Mid North Coast. Founded in 1882, it has been published continuously for more than 140 years, making it one of the oldest newspapers in regional New South Wales. Today it is published by Australian Community Media as a weekly print newspaper — the Friday edition — with a daily digital presence at portnews.com.au, covering Port Macquarie, Wauchope, Laurieton, Camden Haven, and the surrounding Hastings district with local news, sport, community journalism, and lifestyle coverage.

Overview

Port Macquarie News serves one of the great growth centres of the New South Wales coast. Port Macquarie, at the mouth of the Hastings River, has grown from a penal settlement and timber port into a major regional city of around 50,000 people — a tourism destination, a retirement haven, and a service centre for the Hastings Valley. The newspaper has documented that entire transformation: from the river-port era through the postwar tourism boom to the modern city's growth. Published for more than 140 years, it is the Hastings district's newspaper of record — the paper that has covered every council, every flood, every election, and every sporting triumph in the district since the 1880s.

History

The Port Macquarie News was founded by Alfred Edward Pountney and first printed and published on 8 July 1882. Its full original title was The Port Macquarie News and Hastings River Advocate, and it was published as a weekly newspaper circulated through the Bellinger, Nambucca, Macleay, Wilson, Camden Haven, and Manning Rivers, and throughout the whole of the Port Macquarie and Hastings River district. That 1882–1950 masthead has been digitised by the National Library of Australia as part of the Australian Newspapers Digitisation Program, and is available on Trove.

The paper's ownership history is a chronicle of the district's press. Between 1893 and 1907 it was owned and edited by the Reverend Robert Davidson. In 1907 it came back into the ownership of the Pountney family, and from the end of the First World War it was managed by Bertram Hastings Pountney, with his brother Rupert Keith Pountney until 1931. In 1945 the paper was sold to Charles Thomas Uptin, who retained ownership until 1982, assisted by his sons Keith and Alan. The Uptin era — 37 years — saw the paper through the postwar boom, the rise of television, and the transformation of Port Macquarie from a quiet coastal town into a tourism destination. The Port Macquarie Historical Society holds the paper's photographic negatives from the Uptin era, along with index books to the paper's articles from 1955 to 1982 — meticulously compiled by Charles Uptin himself — and a collection of the paper's supplements, inserts, and special issues from 1882 to 2022.

The paper also published books and booklets on the district's history: The History of Port Macquarie and Guide for Tourists (1957), Port Macquarie — Exciting, Beautiful, Historic (1968), and Pictures from the Past: Recollections of early life in the Hastings (1995, with a second printing in 2001) — the newspaper as the district's historian and publisher. After the Uptin era, the paper passed through the Rural Press and Fairfax ownerships into Australian Community Media. For much of its modern history it was published three times a week — Monday, Wednesday, and Friday — before the industry-wide shift to a weekly print edition on Fridays, with digital publishing carrying the news between editions.

Content

Port Macquarie News covers the full range of a regional newspaper's brief, with a strong emphasis on local news and sport presented in a bright, entertaining manner — the paper's own description of its editorial style, as recorded in the National Library's catalogue entry. Its newsroom covers the Port Macquarie-Hastings Council area: council decisions and development debates, court reporting, state and federal politics, education, health, and the environment. The paper is a major sponsor of many local events, reflecting the deep integration of the regional newspaper into its community's civic life.

The district's character shapes the coverage. Port Macquarie is a tourism city — some seventeen beaches, the Hastings River, the koala hospital, the historic penal settlement sites, and the hinterland's national parks and state forests. Tourism, hospitality, and the visitor economy are standing subjects. The district is also a major retirement destination, and the paper covers the health, aged care, and community services that matter to its older readers. The hinterland towns — Wauchope, the timber and dairy centre; Laurieton and Camden Haven, the fishing and holiday towns; the villages of the Hastings Valley — each get their coverage. Sport covers rugby league, surfing, surf lifesaving, cricket, netball, and junior sport; the Hastings is league and surf country, and the paper's sports pages are among its most-read.

The paper's community journalism — the school news, the service clubs, the church notices, the show societies, the CWA branches, the surf clubs — is the connective tissue of the district. Its "What's On" listings, photo sets, and community pages document the social life of the Hastings. Real estate coverage reflects one of the coast's hottest property markets, and the paper's property pages track the sea-change migration that has reshaped the district.

Coverage & Audience

Port Macquarie News serves the Greater Port Macquarie area and the Hastings district — Port Macquarie itself, Wauchope, Laurieton, North Haven, Dunbogan, Kendall, Kew, and the villages of the Hastings Valley and Camden Haven. The district's population has grown rapidly in recent decades, driven by the sea-change and retirement migration, and the paper's audience spans the district's long-established families, its newer arrivals, its retirees, and its tourism and hospitality workforce. The paper's digital audience extends the footprint to former residents and the Hastings diaspora, and to the tourists planning their visits.

The paper's readership is the classic regional newspaper demographic: engaged, local, and loyal — readers who turn to the paper for the news that affects their street, their council, their children's school, and their weekend sport. The paper's 140th anniversary in 2022 was a community milestone, reflecting the depth of its roots in the district.

Ownership

Port Macquarie News is owned and published by Australian Community Media (ACM), the regional newspaper publisher formed from the former Fairfax Media regional assets. ACM is one of Australia's largest regional media companies, publishing dozens of newspapers across New South Wales, Victoria, Queensland, and other states. Port Macquarie News sits within ACM's New South Wales Mid North Coast portfolio, alongside titles including the Manning River Times, the Macleay Argus, the Great Lakes Advocate, and the Wingham Chronicle. The paper's long Pountney-family and Uptin-family ownership eras — a century of local proprietorship — ended in 1982, and it has since been part of the consolidated regional press.

Digital Presence

The paper's digital home is portnews.com.au — "Port Macquarie news, sport and weather" — where local news is published throughout the day between the weekly print edition. The site carries the standard ACM regional newspaper offering: local news, sport, weather, entertainment and lifestyle, community notices, photo galleries, real estate and automotive listings, jobs, and classifieds. The paper maintains a social media presence, with Facebook as its principal community channel. The shift to a weekly Friday print edition was accompanied by an intensified digital publishing rhythm, with the website and social channels carrying the breaking news of the Hastings between print days. The paper's 1882–1950 archive, digitised on Trove, remains a vital resource for historians and family researchers tracing the Hastings district's past.

For the Hastings, Port Macquarie News remains what it has been since 1882: the district's newspaper — the record of its growth from river port to regional city, its councils and courts, its beaches and hinterland, its sports fields and showgrounds — still publishing after more than 140 years, in print weekly and online every day.