About Frankston Times

Frankston Times

Overview

The Frankston Times is a free weekly community newspaper serving the City of Frankston, the bayside municipality at the northern gateway to Victoria's Mornington Peninsula. It is published by the Mornington Peninsula News Group (MPNG), a locally owned and operated independent media company established in 2006, and it sits at the heart of that group's operation as one of five free weekly newspapers covering the peninsula and its northern approaches. The paper appears in print each week and online through the group's shared website, mpnews.com.au, where its reporting sits alongside that of its sister titles, the Mornington News, Western Port News, Southern Peninsula News and Chelsea Mordialloc Mentone News.

The Times is a general-interest community weekly in the classic Australian suburban mould: council decisions, courts and community news, school and kindergarten stories, local business, and extensive grassroots sport, all reported by journalists who work in the district. It remains in active publication — the Australian Press Council's September 2026 constituent list includes the Frankston Times, and stories bylined to its journalists were appearing through the 2025–26 period, covering everything from Frankston Council's long-term infrastructure plan to the Frankston Dolphins' VFL finals campaign and Mornington Peninsula league football and cricket.

History

Frankston has been served by local newspapers since the nineteenth century. The Mornington Standard, founded on 5 October 1889, circulated through Frankston, Mornington, Dromana and Somerville, and its successor the Frankston Standard was published from Wells Street, Frankston, before ceasing in December 1949. For much of the later twentieth century the district's community coverage came from the Leader group of suburban newspapers, which passed to News Corp Australia. The Frankston Times itself, however, is a twenty-first-century title, created within the Mornington Peninsula News Group rather than descended from those earlier mastheads.

The group's own account dates its establishment to 2006. Its founder and publisher, Cameron McCullough, grew up at Tyabb on the peninsula and bought a newsagency in Hastings at the age of twenty. Concerned that the local paper of the day did not interact well enough with its community, he and his colleagues produced their own: an eight-page newspaper printed on a photocopier, of which they distributed 3,000 copies. When a reader rang to ask how to advertise in it, the commercial model was born, and the enterprise grew organically from there into a stable of editions. In time the publishing business outgrew the newsagency, and McCullough and his wife Melissa closed the shop to concentrate on newspapers full time.

The timing proved favourable. MPNG's main competitor, the Independent News group on the peninsula, was purchased by Fairfax, declined and eventually shut down; by McCullough's account, around 80 per cent of MPNG's team are former Independent News staff. The group also undercut the established advertising market — it began by charging $360 for a half-page advertisement when its competitor charged five times that — and built its model on affordable advertising for small local businesses. A further shift came in 2020, when News Corp moved its Leader community titles, including those serving the Mornington Peninsula, to digital-only publication. An MPNG spokesman responded at the time that the group would "double-down on our efforts to keep locals informed in their absence", and the group's free print weeklies remain the peninsula's print newspapers of record.

Programming and Content

The Frankston Times covers the full round of community journalism for its municipality. Council reporting is a staple: in 2025 its journalists were reporting Frankston Council's Long Term Infrastructure Plan, which showed the council planning to advocate for fewer new major projects in favour of upgrading existing assets, and the decision to hand management of Centenary Park Golf Course to the council-owned Peninsula Leisure from July 2026. Its coverage also crosses into neighbouring Kingston, where it reported that council's proposed 24/7 cat curfew under its 2026–2029 Domestic Animal Management Plan and the abandonment of a controversial proposal to ban new gates opening onto public parks and foreshore.

Community and human-interest stories run alongside the civic record — the paper reported, for example, on a Frankston wildlife rescue organisation whose fundraising tin was robbed at a local fundraiser, and on debates over a monitor's appointment at council. Sport is a major component, reflecting the district's dense club culture: Mornington Peninsula Nepean Football League matches involving clubs such as Frankston YCW, the Frankston Dolphins' run through the 2025 VFL finals after consecutive finals appearances in 2024 and 2025, and Mornington Peninsula cricket, including Red Hill's strong start to the 2025/26 season. Letters to the editor, school news and community-group notices complete the mix, in line with the group's founding premise that a community paper should interact closely with the people it serves.

Audience and Reach

The Frankston Times is distributed free to households in Frankston and its surrounding suburbs, funded entirely by advertising; as McCullough has explained, all of MPNG's publications are free, so advertising sales are the company's sole source of revenue. The paper's place in the local media market is recognised by other institutions: Frankston Arts Centre's 2026 guide for event hirers lists the Frankston Times among the local print publications it recommends for advertising, alongside its MPNG stablemates. No independently audited circulation figure for the title is published in the sources consulted for this profile, and none is claimed here. What can be said is that the paper addresses a large, settled suburban municipality — Frankston City Council's own bimonthly newsletter is delivered to 60,000 households across the same city — and that the group reported growth of around eight per cent in its free weekly papers in a recent year, a figure the publisher attributes to continuing demand for a free printed paper in the letterbox.

Digital Presence

The paper's digital home is the Mornington Peninsula News Group website, mpnews.com.au, which carries the Times' stories together with those of the group's other newspapers and magazines, some of it badged for the wider bayside area. Journalists' work for the paper is also tracked by media-monitoring services such as Muck Rack, which maintains a profile for Frankston Times journalist Brodie Cowburn recording his council and sport reporting through 2025. McCullough has been candid that digital income remains a small portion of the group's turnover compared with print, and that the group's future is being built on print while using digital as a supporting channel — an unusual but, on the group's own account, commercially successful position in the current suburban media market.

Ownership and Organisation

The Frankston Times is published by Mornington Peninsula News Group, which describes itself as a locally owned and operated, independent media company established in 2006. The group's founder and publisher is Cameron McCullough. At the time of a detailed published profile of the business, MPNG employed a staff of 26 local professionals — journalists, photographers, designers and sales staff — making it one of the larger employers in its district. Alongside the Frankston Times, the group publishes the Mornington News, Western Port News, Southern Peninsula News and Chelsea Mordialloc Mentone News each week, and two magazines: Peninsula Essence, a glossy monthly lifestyle magazine distributed from Frankston to Portsea, and Peninsula Kids, a quarterly magazine for families that the group bought from its two founders and converted from an online brand into print. The group's advertising operation is led by a group advertising manager — Anton Hoffman held that role in 2026 — reflecting the advertising-funded model on which the whole enterprise rests.

Contact and Availability

The Frankston Times is available free each week in print across the City of Frankston and online at mpnews.com.au. Mornington Peninsula News Group can be contacted on 03 5974 9000; its group advertising manager's published email is anton@mpnews.com.au. Public notices and community contributions are carried in the paper's print edition and on the group website.