About The Bugle

The Bugle

Overview

The Bugle is a free, independently owned community newspaper serving Kiama and its surrounding villages on the New South Wales South Coast, at the southern edge of the Illawarra region. It publishes a printed edition every fortnight and a continuously updated digital news service through The Bugle App, which is mirrored on its website. By the paper's own account it has been publishing since 2014, and it describes itself as a local institution and a must-read for people living in and visiting the Kiama area. Since the closure of the Kiama Independent in 2020 ended a 157-year run, The Bugle has been the only newspaper produced in Kiama itself, covering Kiama Municipal Council, local courts, schools, surf lifesaving, sport and community life for the Kiama local government area and, by its own description, reaching into Shellharbour and the wider Illawarra.

History

Kiama had been a newspaper town for a century and a half before The Bugle appeared. The Kiama Independent was first published in July 1863 after a public meeting, called over fears the rival Kiama Examiner would be amalgamated with the Illawarra Mercury, resolved to start a new paper. Joseph Weston was its first proprietor and ran it for 50 years until his death in 1913, and the Weston family retained it for five further generations — a tenure Kiama Library describes as making it the oldest family-owned newspaper in Australia. The Weston family sold the Independent in 2005 to Southern Independent Publishers, ending 142 years of family ownership, and it was on-sold to Fairfax Media in 2010, later passing to Australian Community Media. The Independent ceased publication in 2020.

The Bugle began publishing in 2014, while the Independent was still in production, as a free community newspaper for the Kiama area. Its own published history says it set out to let "the people living and visiting Kiama know what is going on in this beautiful part of the world". When the Independent closed in 2020, The Bugle remained as the town's locally produced print title. In January 2021, in the middle of the COVID-19 pandemic, it launched its digital channels — a mobile app and a web app — a move its owner said was intended to let a small hyper-local publisher report news as it happened rather than waiting for the next print deadline. The experiment was recognised the following year: at the Country Press NSW annual conference in Sydney in October 2022, The Bugle won the Award of Excellence for Best Digital/Online Presence, judged across the online editions of the association's member publishers.

Programming and Content

The Bugle's journalism is centred on Kiama's civic and community life. Council coverage is a staple: Kiama Municipal Council's community engagement reporting records that council communications officers supply media releases and answers to questions from Bugle journalists under the council's media policy, and that the paper provides broad coverage of council events, projects and strategies. The scrutiny runs both ways — in May 2025 the council took the unusual step of publishing a detailed public correction disputing what it called false facts and misleading information in a Bugle front-page article about developer contribution plans, headlined "One Simple fix could have saved millions". Whatever the merits of that dispute, it documents an active local paper publishing contested front-page reporting about its council in 2025 and being answered on the public record.

Beyond the council chamber, the paper covers the everyday texture of a coastal town. Stories distributed through its app in early 2026 included coverage of Kiama cricket's 170th anniversary, the debut of a local Drink Show, the Kiama branch of the Country Women's Association facing an uncertain future as its home base changed hands, an emergency services response at the Kiama Blowhole, and a screening at Kiama Surf Life Saving Club of a documentary featuring ironman Ali Day. Its app is also positioned as a community hub, carrying information about local businesses, community groups and even surf conditions alongside news and sport. A reporter, Maria Lewis, was identified as a current member of its reporting team in mid-2026.

Audience and Reach

No independently audited circulation figure for The Bugle has been published, and none is claimed here. The audience figures in circulation are the paper's own. Its published business description states that 20,000 newspapers hit the street each month and that its app has been downloaded more than 16,000 times. Speaking after the 2022 Country Press NSW award, owner Cathy Law said the app had lifted the paper's profile and that "the message of the effectiveness of reaching an average of 15,000 engaged readers is finally getting across", adding that the digital channels reached close to 100 per cent of the local adult population — a publisher's claim, presented as such. The same account records a big increase in advertising revenue after the app's launch, which Law credited with positioning the business for sustainability. The paper's stated coverage geography runs from the NSW South Coast through the Kiama local government area to Shellharbour and the Illawarra.

Digital Presence

The Bugle took a deliberately app-first approach to digital publishing at a time when, as its owner observed in 2022, most hyper-local publishers were relying on websites alone and grappling with how to integrate them into their businesses. The Bugle App, launched in January 2021, provides a daily news feed between fortnightly print editions and is available in free and premium subscription forms; its content is mirrored at the paper's website, thebuglenewspaper.com.au, and its stories are distributed through news aggregation services under The Bugle App name. Print editions have also been published in digital replica form — an edition dated 3 June 2023, for example, was posted to the Issuu platform. The 2022 Country Press NSW Award of Excellence for Best Digital/Online Presence was awarded for these digital channels.

Ownership and Organisation

The Bugle is an independent, locally owned newspaper. Industry reporting in November 2022 identified Cathy Law as the paper's owner; she spoke publicly for the business about its digital strategy and its award win, and print editions have been uploaded to Issuu under an account in her name. The paper is a member of Country Press NSW, the state association of country newspaper publishers, which listed "The Bugle, Kiama" among its member publications in its submission to the federal parliamentary inquiry into Australia's regional newspapers. It operates as a small newsroom: Law said in 2022 that the workload created by the app had led the paper to employ another two part-time journalists, and its reporting team was still being added to in 2026, when Maria Lewis was described as a current Bugle reporter. Its independence distinguishes it from its remaining local competitors, which include ACM's Illawarra Mercury, the long-established Wollongong daily, and digital-only local outlets that have entered the Illawarra market in recent years.

Contact and Availability

The Bugle is a free newspaper, distributed in print around Kiama and the surrounding district, with its office listed in business directories at Unit 2, 88–89 Terralong Street, in Kiama's Edessa Arcade, and a business phone number published in the same listings. Its digital service, The Bugle App, can be downloaded from the app stores and is mirrored on its website, where the current print edition and the paper's advertising and contact information are published.