About The Everton Echo

The Everton Echo

Overview

The Everton Echo is a free monthly community newsmagazine serving Everton Park and the adjoining suburbs of Brisbane's north-west — Mitchelton, McDowall, Newmarket, Wilston, Stafford and Alderley. Although some directories describe it as a suburban weekly, its own editions establish the true format: it is a glossy monthly magazine, produced on a monthly cycle by Echo Media Group Pty Ltd and delivered free to homes and businesses across its catchment. The December 2025 edition, read in full as the publisher's online flip-book, went to press on 24 November 2025 and carries the masthead line "Est 2020".

The Everton Echo is the second of three sister mastheads published through the Echo News platform. It sits between The Hills Echo, the group's founding title for the Arana Hills and Ferny Hills district, and The Eatons Echo, which serves Eatons Hill and Albany Creek further north. Each magazine keeps its own nameplate, cover and community content for its own defined patch, while sharing production, listings and advertising across the stable. The title is listed under its publisher in the Australian Press Council's registers of constituent publications, including the register dated September 2026, and its masthead states that it is a proud member of the Press Council.

History

The Everton Echo grew out of the local publishing base Echo News built in Brisbane's north-west from the early 1990s. The group's first newsmagazine, The Hills Echo, commenced publication in 1992, and the company dates its service as a source of local news in the north-western districts of Brisbane to that year. The publisher's own account of the stable's growth, published in its app and media material, records that on the strength of The Hills Echo's following, "in August 2020, The Everton Echo was born" — extending the group's coverage from the Hills district into the Everton Park corridor. The Eatons Echo followed in 2021, after residents of Eatons Hill and Albany Creek asked the group to bring local news to their suburbs following the demise of the corporate newspapers that had previously served them.

The catchment the Everton Echo was created for is an established post-war suburban district roughly eight kilometres north-west of the Brisbane CBD, built around the South Pine Road and Old Northern Road corridors. Everton Park itself recorded 10,111 residents at the 2021 census, with a median age of 35 — a comparatively young, family-oriented suburb of homes, schools, sporting clubs and local shopping strips, continuous with the neighbouring suburbs the magazine also covers. In her December 2025 publisher's letter, Katie Maclean described the three Echo magazines as titles "created by locals, for locals", which readers call "the people's papers", and recorded that the print magazines were "absolutely thriving", with distribution points growing every month.

Programming and Content

The Everton Echo's editorial formula is positive, parochial and participatory, built around the people, schools, clubs, churches and events of its own suburbs rather than metropolitan hard news. The December 2025 edition illustrates the mix. Its cover story previewed the Bridgeman Baptist Christmas Lights Festival at Bridgeman Downs — three nights of lights, shows, market stalls and carnival rides expected to draw thousands, an event that grew out of the church's early-2000s Carols in the Park and made global headlines in 2022 when three camels from its nativity scene escaped. Inside, the edition covered the Everton Park Bowls Club's Christmas on the Green concert with the Second Wind Community Band, carried a letter from the Lions Club of Brisbane Bunya explaining its decision to pause its long-running Carols in the Park in 2025 and return in 2026, and noted community fixtures such as the monthly Repair Cafe at the Grovely–Mitchelton Scout Den.

Local history is a standing feature: the same edition carried an Enoggera and District Historical Society piece marking the bicentenary of the Fort Dundas settlement on Melville Island, drawn from original research, alongside a "Did you know?" item on the old Chermside drive-in shopping centre. Practical and lifestyle content fills out the magazine — a recipe of the month supplied by the Queensland Country Women's Association's Queensland Country Kitchens team, notices for groups such as the Aspley Art Group, whose free sessions the edition announced would continue through 2026, and a standing invitation for readers to share historical photographs with the community. Community groups, clubs and businesses are invited to contribute their news, and reader-supplied material forms a significant part of the magazine. As a member publication of the Australian Press Council, the magazine is bound by the Council's Standards of Practice.

Audience and Reach

The Everton Echo is delivered free across a settled suburban catchment of family homes roughly eight kilometres from the Brisbane city centre. Its namesake suburb, Everton Park, had 10,111 residents at the 2021 census, and the magazine's distribution extends through Mitchelton, McDowall, Newmarket, Wilston, Stafford and Alderley — a contiguous belt of north-western suburbs whose households are the local traders, schools and services advertising in its pages.

The publisher puts The Everton Echo's own delivery at 14,500 copies per month, the same monthly figure it publishes for each of its three print titles; in her December 2025 letter the publisher described the stable as "delivering thousands of copies every month across Eatons, Everton, and The Hills Echo regions, with local distribution points growing every month". No separate audited circulation for The Everton Echo has been released, and the figures above are the publisher's own, presented as such. The title's appearance in the Australian Press Council's September 2026 register of member publications confirms it remains an active part of that market, and it is also listed among the publications in Country Press Australia's recent federal submission on news bargaining incentives.

Digital Presence

The Everton Echo shares the Echo News digital platform at echo-news.com.au, which presents the group's three print titles and its north-west Brisbane community content. Its print editions are published online as page-turning flip-books — the December 2025 edition can be read in full in that form, exactly as it appeared in print — and the group distributes the magazines through an e-newsletter that delivers editions to subscribers' inboxes, an Echo News mobile app, and its social media channels.

Around the magazines, the group has built a small local media ecosystem. The Echo Online Directory, at echodirectory.com.au, gathers the group's advertisers in a searchable online directory which the publisher says was built in partnership with Google; local news and event screens carrying Echo content have been placed in cafés across the district; and the group produces "Talk of the Town", a community podcast spotlighting the stories, businesses and people of the north-west suburbs. For a three-title suburban publisher, the monthly print magazine remains the flagship, with the website, app, directory, flip-books and podcast amplifying each edition.

Ownership and Organisation

The Everton Echo is published by Echo Media Group Pty Ltd (ABN 92 620 601 907), an independently owned local media company based in Brisbane's north-west. The December 2025 masthead records the publisher as Echo Media Group Pty Ltd, of PO Box 243, Arana Hills, Queensland 4054 — in the heart of the district the group has published in since 1992 — and the group describes its magazines as "100% locally owned and operated" and "proudly independent… not influenced by any political or corporate nonsense". Echo Media Group is the publisher member behind all three Echo mastheads — The Hills Echo, The Everton Echo and The Eatons Echo — each listed under Queensland in the Australian Press Council's September 2026 register of constituent publications.

The organisation is a compact suburban publishing house. A small team led by publisher Katie Maclean, who signs the magazine's monthly publisher's letter, produces the three magazines on a shared monthly cycle together with the group's website, app, directory, podcast and social channels. Editorial and advertising are handled within the group: the December 2025 edition's published rate card offered local businesses colour advertising from $125 for an eighth of a page on a casual booking ($110 on a regular booking) to $650 for a full page ($610 regular). Community contributors supply a share of the content, keeping the magazine closely tied to the organisations it covers.

Contact and Availability

The Everton Echo is published monthly and distributed free to homes and businesses across Everton Park, Mitchelton, McDowall, Newmarket, Wilston, Stafford and Alderley. Current and recent editions can be read online as flip-books through the Echo News website at echo-news.com.au, where readers can also find the group's contact points for news tips, community contributions and advertising. The publisher, Echo Media Group Pty Ltd, can be contacted at PO Box 243, Arana Hills, Queensland 4054, or by phone on 0466 607 045. Community groups and clubs in the Everton Park district are invited to submit their news and event details for inclusion in upcoming editions, and local businesses can join the Echo Online Directory through echodirectory.com.au.