About Warracknabeal Herald

Warracknabeal Herald

Overview

The Warracknabeal Herald is the local newspaper of Warracknabeal, the service town at the heart of Victoria's Yarriambiack Shire, and the home title of its publisher, Wimmera Mallee News. It is a weekly newspaper published on Fridays and printed on the premises in Warracknabeal — a survival of the old country pattern in which a town's paper was written, printed and read in the same place. Its circulation reaches through the northern Wimmera and the southern Mallee in north-west Victoria, taking in the townships of Warracknabeal, Brim, Beulah, Hopetoun, Minyip, Murtoa, Rupanyup, Watchem, Birchip, Jeparit, Rainbow and Yaapeet.

The Herald stands in the Australian Communications and Media Authority's Register of Eligible News Businesses as one of Wimmera Mallee News' registered news sources, with its registered content link on the publisher's website, and it is listed among the Australian Press Council's constituent publications in September 2026. Its publisher's own advertising material for 2026 documents it in current production: the group's Wimmera Farmer Field Days edition was scheduled for insertion into the Herald of Friday 27 February 2026, alongside its sister titles.

History

The paper has been published under the Warracknabeal Herald title since 1902, when the print edition with ISSN 1033-0798 was published in Warracknabeal by S. Sampson. Library records trace the title's lineage through two earlier forms: the Northern Argus and the Warracknabeal Herald and Wimmera District Advocate, the district-advocate styling marking its role as the voice of the wheat townships of the northern Wimmera. The publisher's 2024 media kit describes the Herald as having been "in circulation for 135 years" — the company's own claim, which reaches back through those predecessor titles to the late 1880s rather than to the 1902 start of the present title form.

The Herald's print run is held in national and state collections, and digitised back issues are available through the National Library of Australia's Trove service, making the paper a primary historical record of the district it serves. The National Library also records its online edition (ISSN 2202-0217) under its current publisher, Wimmera Mallee News, which is based in the town. The paper's continuity is part of its identity: it remains printed on the premises in Warracknabeal, and when its publisher expanded in February 2025 — buying the Wimmera Mail-Times of Horsham from Australian Community Media — the Herald was the established home title of the buying company, the paper around which the Warracknabeal group had been built.

Programming and Content

The Herald is a general local newspaper for an agricultural district. Its pages carry Yarriambiack Shire Council affairs, courts and community news, the seasonal fortunes of the broadacre farming economy — wheat, barley, canola and lentils across the Wimmera and Mallee — and the sport, above all the football and netball of the district leagues, that organises social life in the small towns it serves. Its publisher's media kit describes the circulation area as servicing the commercial, educational and medical needs of people living in the townships it reaches, and the paper's role follows that pattern: school news, health services, farm services and community events sit alongside district news.

Farming coverage is structural rather than occasional. The Herald carries the group's farming publication, the Wimmera Farmer — described by the publisher as the Wimmera–Mallee's premier farming news provider — as an insert for set-piece occasions: the bumper edition produced for the 2026 Wimmera Machinery Field Days of 3–5 March 2026 was inserted into the Herald's Friday 27 February 2026 edition, alongside the group's other titles. The land-use contests of the district — renewable energy and mineral sands projects proposed across Yarriambiack Shire, and the transmission lines planned to serve them — are the kind of district questions the Herald's news pages exist to record for the landholders and townspeople affected.

Audience and Reach

The Herald's own town provides its core readership. Its publisher's 2024 media kit puts Warracknabeal's population at about 3,100 people and describes the town as the economic and local government centre of the Shire of Yarriambiack, with a population of around 10,000; the paper's circulation extends well beyond the town, through the northern Wimmera and southern Mallee regions of north-west Victoria. No audited circulation figure for the title is published in the sources consulted, and none is claimed here; its reach is evidenced by its registration as a current news source, its place in the Press Council's September 2026 list, and its publisher's continued weekly production of the title in 2026.

The Herald's standing in the industry's current records is consistent across registers. Besides the ACMA Register — where Wimmera Mallee News' entry was registered on 10 February 2025 and updated on 10 February 2026 — the paper appears in Country Press Australia's submission to the Commonwealth's News Bargaining Incentive consultation and in the Australian Press Council's September 2026 list of constituent publications, the current membership roll of the press standards body. Those listings are not ceremonial: they are the records through which the title's eligibility, standards commitments and currency are formally maintained.

Digital Presence

The Herald publishes online through its publisher's website, wimmeramalleenews.com.au, where it has its own section — the section the ACMA register records as its registered news source link — alongside the group's other mastheads; the paper's own long-standing address is warrackherald.com.au, the domain carried in this directory. The publisher's site operates the group's shared digital presence, and its journalists' work across the stable is tracked by media-monitoring services such as Muck Rack, which profiles Herald journalists and their reporting from the district. The Wimmera Farmer's 2026 advertising material also points to the scale of the group's combined online operation, claiming 50,000 monthly readers online across its network — a group-level figure, not a Herald audience number.

Ownership and Organisation

The Warracknabeal Herald is owned and published by Wimmera Mallee News Pty Ltd (ABN 89 644 755 386), the locally owned company based at Warracknabeal. The ACMA Register lists the company's registered news sources as the Warracknabeal Herald, Rainbow Jeparit Argus, Dimboola Banner, Hopetoun Courier, the Wimmera Farmer and the Wimmera Mail-Times, with Andrew Ward as the registered contact. The group also publishes Wimmera Mallee Sport, a weekly sports newspaper launched on 9 April 2024. In February 2025 the company bought the Wimmera Mail-Times from Australian Community Media — a change of ownership recorded at 28 February 2025 in the Public Interest Journalism Initiative's news data — and merged its own Horsham Times into that paper, making the Herald's publisher the owner of Horsham's newspaper of record as well as of the small-town weeklies of the northern Wimmera and southern Mallee. The Herald itself remains what it has long been: the locally owned, locally printed paper of its home town.

Contact and Availability

The Warracknabeal Herald is published each Friday in print in Warracknabeal and can be read online through its publisher's website, wimmeramalleenews.com.au, as well as at its own address, warrackherald.com.au. Because the paper is still printed on the premises in Warracknabeal, its Friday edition remains a print-first product for the townships it serves, while the publisher's website carries the masthead's news between editions and connects readers to the group's other titles and farming coverage. Wimmera Mallee News' registered contact is Andrew Ward, on 03 5398 2033, with the published email andrew@wmnews.com.au. Public notices, community contributions and advertising are carried in the paper's Friday print editions and on the publisher's website.