About Western Downs Today

Western Downs Today

Overview

Western Downs Today is a print newspaper serving the Western Downs region of southern Queensland, the farming and energy country west of Toowoomba centred on the town of Dalby. It publishes three times a week, on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays, according to the Queensland Government's Office of Groundwater Impact Assessment, which recorded those publication days when it placed statutory notices in the paper in late 2025. The newspaper is part of Today News Group, the independent regional publishing group built up by Star News Group managing director Paul Thomas and his partners after the major chains withdrew from regional print in 2020. Western Downs Today is registered with the Australian Communications and Media Authority (ACMA) as a newspaper masthead of South Burnett Today Pty Ltd, the same group company behind Burnett Today, Maranoa Today, the Goondiwindi Argus and Queensland Farmer Today, and it appears in the Australian Press Council's register of publisher-member mastheads dated September 2026.

The paper's territory is one of the largest newspaper patches in Queensland. The publisher puts the Western Downs at 37,937 square kilometres with a population of 34,467 people, spanning the towns of Dalby, Chinchilla, Meandarra, Wandoan and Moonie, along with Miles, Tara, Jandowae and the smaller settlements between them. Dalby, the region's biggest town and the paper's home base, sits just under three hours' drive west of Brisbane on the Warrego Highway.

History

For generations the Western Downs was served by long-established News Corp titles, above all the Dalby Herald, which had been published in Dalby since 1865, and the Chinchilla News in the region's west. That era ended during the COVID-19 pandemic. In May 2020 News Corp Australia announced that the Dalby Herald, the Chinchilla News and dozens of other regional titles would cease print editions and become digital-only; the Herald's print run ended in June 2020, leaving the Western Downs without a printed local newspaper of its own.

Western Downs Today was created to fill that gap. It belongs to the wave of replacement newspapers launched by the Today News Group partnership — Paul Thomas, Damian Morgan and the late Bruce Ellen — which set out to restore local print journalism in communities the big groups had left. As Thomas later explained to the printing and publishing trade journal GXpress, Western Downs Today was one of several launches in "news desert" areas, established with assistance from funds provided through Meta grants, in places where local news services "had been lost, reduced or were under serious pressure". The launches were built on Star News Group's back-end systems — administration, pagination, design, advertising and digital publishing — combined with local staff and local knowledge in each market, a model the Public Interest Journalism Initiative recorded as the Today brand grew from a single digital outlet in Noosa before COVID-19 to eleven launched titles across regional Australia in the years after.

The paper was established well before August 2024, when Western Downs Regional Council relied on it as the newspaper circulating in the local government area for a statutory public notice about proposed amendments to the Western Downs Planning Scheme, published in the paper's Friday 2 August 2024 edition. Its role as the region's newspaper of record was confirmed again in October 2025, when the Queensland Government's draft Underground Water Impact Report for the Surat Cumulative Management Area was notified in its Friday 31 October 2025 edition.

Programming and Content

Western Downs Today's editorial brief is the whole life of a big rural region. Council affairs loom large: Western Downs Regional Council, based in Dalby, is one of Queensland's largest rural councils, and its budgets, road programs, planning scheme changes and public notices run through the paper's pages. Agriculture is the region's economic backbone and a staple of its coverage — the Darling Downs and Western Downs grow cotton, sorghum, wheat, chickpeas and other grains and legumes, run major cattle feedlots, and sell through the Dalby Regional Saleyards, which the publisher describes as the second largest cattle saleyards in Australia; Western Downs Regional Council reported nearly 300,000 head of cattle sold through the saleyards in the 2025-26 financial year.

Energy is the other defining story. The Western Downs overlays the Surat Basin, where coal seam gas development by companies such as Arrow Energy has reshaped farmland, water politics and local economies for more than a decade. The paper carries the statutory advertising and consultation notices that accompany that industry — including the groundwater impact reporting process — as well as the community debate around land access, subsidence and water use. Alongside news and rural coverage, the paper reports local sport across the region's towns, school and community news, and the events calendar of the "Big Skies" country: the Chinchilla Melon Festival, Dalby's Delicious and Delightful festival, Miles' Back to the Bush Festival and Tara's Festival of Culture and Camel Races among them.

Audience and Reach

The paper's readers are the households, farms and businesses of a region of roughly 34,000 people spread across nearly 38,000 square kilometres — a dispersed audience of farming families, gasfield and agricultural workers, small-town retailers and service businesses, and retirees in towns such as Dalby, Chinchilla, Miles, Tara, Jandowae and Wandoan. No independently audited circulation figure for Western Downs Today has been published, and the publisher does not quote one in its national material; its reach rests on the three-times-weekly print edition sold and distributed across the region's towns, backed by the paper's website.

That print presence has a formal civic dimension. Queensland agencies and the regional council use Western Downs Today for statutory public notices that must, by law, appear in a newspaper circulating in the area — the Western Downs Regional Council planning consultation of August 2024 and the Queensland Government's Surat Basin groundwater consultation of October-November 2025 both ran in its editions — which places the paper at the centre of the region's official information flow as well as its news.

Digital Presence

Western Downs Today publishes online at westerndownstoday.com.au, the address recorded for the masthead in ACMA's Register of Eligible News Businesses and promoted by Today News Group's own site. The website extends the print edition's local news, sport and community coverage to readers across the region and to the Western Downs diaspora elsewhere. The paper sits inside the Today News Group's shared digital operation: the group has deliberately expanded its websites, digital editions, newsletters and social channels alongside print, arguing that local journalism now has to reach readers across all of those platforms, while keeping journalists and salespeople based in the markets they serve.

Ownership and Organisation

Western Downs Today is published by South Burnett Today Pty Ltd (ABN 64 641 796 349), one of the related regional publishing companies that make up Today News Group. ACMA's register, which lists the business's registration dated 12 December 2025, records five newspaper mastheads under the company — Burnett Today, Maranoa Today, Western Downs Today, the Goondiwindi Argus and Queensland Farmer Today — with group managing director Paul Thomas as its registered contact. Thomas, a fourth-generation newspaperman, is also managing director of Melbourne-headquartered Star News Group, founded in 1909, whose centralised systems for finance, production, pagination, IT, classifieds and advertising underpin the Today titles.

Today News Group grew out of the partnership between Thomas, media consultant Damian Morgan and Gippsland publisher Bruce Ellen, formed as News Corp and Australian Community Media closed or suspended regional titles in 2020. By the middle of the decade the group's related companies published 69 mastheads across Australia, mixing new "Today" launches in former news deserts with acquired family newspapers. Day-to-day, Western Downs Today is produced to the group's shared model: local editorial and advertising staff in the region, supported by centralised production and administration.

Contact and Availability

Western Downs Today publishes in print three times a week, on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays, and is available across the Western Downs region, including Dalby, Chinchilla, Miles, Tara, Jandowae, Wandoan and Meandarra. Its news, sport and community coverage can also be read online at westerndownstoday.com.au, and the paper's publisher, Today News Group, profiles the title on its website at todaynewsgroup.com.au. Statutory and public notices for the region, including Western Downs Regional Council and Queensland Government consultations, are published in its print editions.