About Maranoa Today

Maranoa Today

Overview

Maranoa Today is a paid weekly newspaper published in Roma, Queensland, serving the Maranoa region of the state's south-west. It appears in print each Friday, with its website updated around the clock. The paper covers the Maranoa Regional Council area — a district of roughly 13,850 people, on the publisher's own figures — centred on Roma, the main business centre of south-west Queensland, and taking in the towns of Injune, Mitchell, Surat, Wallumbilla, Yuleba, Mungallala, Jackson, Amby and Muckadilla, about 500 kilometres west of Brisbane.

The title belongs to the Today News Group, the independent regional publishing group built after 2020 to restore local newspapers in markets where larger publishers had withdrawn. On the ACMA register of eligible news businesses, Maranoa Today is registered to South Burnett Today Pty Ltd, the first company established under the Today model, alongside its sister titles Burnett Today, Western Downs Today, the Goondiwindi Argus and Queensland Farmer Today. Its publisher describes it as the region's most popular community newspaper and its first choice for local news, carrying local reporting, sport results, community information and special features produced for the district rather than syndicated from elsewhere.

History

Roma had been served by a local newspaper since 1875, when the Western Star and Roma Advertiser began publishing under Francis Kidner; as the Western Star it became one of the longest-running papers in outback Queensland, published weekly and then twice weekly for much of its life, and by 1952 it was declaring itself the largest bi-weekly in Queensland. That lineage lost its print edition in June 2020, when News Corp Australia ended print publication of the Western Star along with many other regional titles and moved it online only from 26 June 2020. The Maranoa was left without a printed local newspaper of its own — the gap in which the district's council business, court reporting, sporting results and community record no longer appeared in a local print edition.

Maranoa Today was created to fill that gap. The Public Interest Journalism Initiative's Australian Newsroom Mapping Project records that the paper launched on 29 July 2022, based in Roma and covering the broader local government area, as the latest publication in the Today News Group stable. Group managing director Paul Thomas has said the Maranoa title was among a set of launches in "news desert" communities — with Tennant Creek Today and Western Downs Today — assisted by funding provided through Meta grants, created where local news services had been lost, reduced or were under serious pressure.

The Today News Group itself grew out of the 2020 closures. Thomas, a fourth-generation newspaperman and managing director of the Melbourne-headquartered Star News Group (founded 1909), formed the venture with fellow newspapermen Damian Morgan and Bruce Ellen. Its model establishes related local publishing companies, often involving people with experience in the market, supported by Star News Group's centralised production, pagination, technology, advertising and administrative systems. South Burnett Today, the company behind Maranoa Today, was the first established under that model, initially around the former News Corp general manager of the South Burnett Times, Daniel Pelcl.

Programming and Content

Maranoa Today's editorial mix is deliberately local. Its publisher positions the paper around unique local news, sport results, local information and special features on topics of interest to the district, rather than state or national coverage available anywhere. In practice that means reporting on the Maranoa Regional Council and community institutions, the courts and emergency services, schools, sporting clubs and community events across Roma and the smaller towns of the region, and the rural industries on which the district's economy rests.

The Maranoa's economy gives the paper a strong rural and resources brief. The region's history and present are built around agriculture — Roma hosts Australia's largest cattle-selling centre, the Roma Saleyards — alongside the coal seam gas industry of the Surat Basin, mining and health services. Agricultural news, livestock and saleyard reporting, land management and rural business stories sit alongside coverage of gas and energy development and the health and education services of a remote regional centre. Community content — anniversaries, club results, school achievements and local identities — fills out an edition aimed at readers across all of the district's towns, not only its centre.

Audience and Reach

The publisher's 2026 advertiser kit, Maranoa Today Facts 2026, presents the title as a paid publication published on Fridays and online 24/7. The kit estimates the paper's print and digital edition readership at 5,372 readers, in figures the publisher states were compiled as at 18 December 2025 from estimated print and digital edition readership, Google Analytics website data and Facebook Insights. The same kit puts the population of the Maranoa region at approximately 13,850 and lists the distribution footprint across postcodes covering Roma and the surrounding towns named above.

The readership profile published in the kit is that of an agricultural and working regional community: managers form the largest occupational group at 22.5 per cent of readers, followed by labourers at 13.3 per cent, technicians and trades workers at 13.3 per cent and professionals at 12.9 per cent, with readers spread across age groups from under-34s (45.5 per cent) through to readers aged 65 and over (16.3 per cent). These are the publisher's own marketing figures, presented as such, and no independently audited circulation for the title has been published.

Digital Presence

Maranoa Today's website, maranoatoday.com.au, operates continuously alongside the Friday print edition, carrying the paper's local news, sport and community coverage online, and the title maintains a Facebook presence at facebook.com/maranoatoday, which the publisher counts within its audience measurement. Digital editions of the printed paper form part of the registered news source recorded with the ACMA. Like other Today News Group titles, the Roma paper is produced within the group's shared digital publishing and production systems, while its reporting is generated locally for the Maranoa audience.

Ownership and Organisation

Maranoa Today is published by South Burnett Today Pty Ltd (ABN 64 641 796 349), part of the Today News Group. The ACMA register of eligible news businesses records the company's five newspaper mastheads — Burnett Today, Maranoa Today, Western Downs Today, the Goondiwindi Argus and Queensland Farmer Today — registered on 12 December 2025, with Today News Group managing director Paul Thomas as the registered contact. Paul Thomas is also managing director of Star News Group, the Thomas family's Melbourne-based publishing group founded in 1909, whose systems and experience underpin the Today companies.

The Today News Group describes its structure as a group of related regional publishing companies rather than a traditional chain: local managers, journalists and sales staff work in their own markets, while functions such as finance, administration, IT, pagination, design, digital publishing, advertising systems and classifieds are centralised. By 2026 the wider group had grown to 69 news mastheads across Australia, through a combination of new launches in towns that had lost their papers and acquisitions of existing independent titles.

Contact and Availability

Maranoa Today is published from Roma, Queensland, each Friday, in print and online at maranoatoday.com.au. Advertising enquiries are handled on 07 4182 0450 and at advertising@maranoatoday.com.au, and classified advertising on 1300 666 808, as listed in the publisher's 2026 advertiser kit. The print edition's advertising deadlines published in the same kit fall on Mondays and Tuesdays ahead of each Friday edition. The paper's Facebook page operates under the name maranoatoday.