About Western Port News

Western Port News

Overview

The Western Port News is a free weekly community newspaper serving Hastings and the Western Port side of 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 is the group's edition for the district in which the whole enterprise began. 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, Southern Peninsula News, Frankston Times and Chelsea Mordialloc Mentone News. The group's own description of its operation lists the Western Port News first among its five weekly community newspapers.

The paper remains in active publication. The Australian Press Council's September 2026 constituent list includes the Western Port News among the publications of its publisher member, and journalists writing for the title were covering the district's issues through the 2025–26 period — road safety campaigns around Tyabb, Mornington Peninsula Shire decisions and the long-running debates over the future of the Port of Hastings among them.

History

The Western Port News is a twenty-first-century title created within the Mornington Peninsula News Group, but it serves one of the peninsula's oldest settled districts. Hastings, on the western shore of Western Port bay, grew up around fishing, farming and later industry, and its townships — Tyabb, Somerville, Bittern, Crib Point and Balnarring among them — were historically covered by a shifting cast of peninsula papers based elsewhere. The modern paper's story is the story of its publisher.

MPNG's founder and publisher, Cameron McCullough, grew up at Tyabb 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 the Hastings 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 business grew organically from that Hastings seed into a stable of zoned editions across the peninsula. In time the publishing business outgrew the newsagency, and McCullough and his wife Melissa closed the shop to concentrate on newspapers full time. The group's own account dates its establishment to 2006.

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, beginning with a half-page advertisement priced at a fraction of its competitor's rate. 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 that the group would "double-down on our efforts to keep locals informed in their absence". Through all of these changes the free printed weekly for the Western Port district has remained a constant part of the group's line-up.

Programming and Content

The Western Port News covers the full round of community journalism for its district. Mornington Peninsula Shire decisions affecting the Western Port townships are a staple, as are the planning questions that dominate a district where rural land, villages and heavy industry sit side by side. The paper's status as the district's newspaper of record is reflected in official practice: a Mornington Peninsula Planning Scheme report recorded statutory notice of a major Hastings gas facility and powerline proposal as "published in the Mornington News and Western Port News newspapers".

Two great industrial questions have defined the district's recent history and its news agenda. The first was AGL's proposal for a floating gas import terminal at Crib Point, which drew a mass community campaign — thousands of postcards to the planning minister, wetsuit-clad protests at Parliament House — before the minister ruled the project unacceptable in 2021. The second is the Port of Hastings' proposed Victorian Renewable Energy Terminal at the Old Tyabb Reclamation Area, intended to assemble offshore wind turbines for Gippsland's wind farms: the federal environment minister rejected the first version in January 2024 over the threat to Western Port's Ramsar-listed wetlands, and a revised, smaller proposal went through public comment in 2025. Both debates have been running stories for the group's Western Port coverage, in a community that takes its role as defender of the bay seriously.

Alongside the big issues runs the ordinary fabric of district life: residents' petitions — one recent campaign for safety upgrades at the Mornington-Tyabb Road and Racecourse Road intersection drew more than 700 signatures — school and community-group news, local business, and grassroots sport across the district's football, netball and cricket clubs. Journalists such as Raia Flinos, whose byline appears across the Western Port News and its sister titles, report the district week by week.

Audience and Reach

The Western Port News is distributed free to households in Hastings and the surrounding Western Port townships, 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. Its readership is the settled and growing community of the peninsula's Western Port side, within a shire whose population is spread between the Port Phillip and Western Port coasts. No independently audited circulation figure for the title is published in the sources consulted for this profile, and none is claimed here. The paper's reach is better measured by its place in the district's civic life: it is the publication in which statutory notices for the area are placed, and the one local institutions and campaigners use to reach Western Port households.

Digital Presence

The paper's digital home is the Mornington Peninsula News Group website, mpnews.com.au, which carries the Western Port News' stories together with those of the group's other newspapers and magazines, organised by district so that Western Port readers can follow their own area's reporting. Journalists' work for the paper is also tracked by media-monitoring services such as Muck Rack, which maintains profiles recording its reporters' stories. 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 Western Port News 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 Western Port News, the group publishes the Mornington News, Southern Peninsula News, Frankston Times 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. 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 Western Port News is available free each week in print across Hastings and the Western Port district 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.