About Campaspe News

Campaspe News

Overview

The Campaspe News is the local newspaper of Rochester, a town of about 3,000 people on the Campaspe River in northern Victoria, and of the farming district around it. It is published every Tuesday by the McPherson Media Group, the Shepparton-based family newspaper company, and it should not be confused with the group's better-known Echuca title: the district's long-established journal of record is the Riverine Herald, published at Echuca, some 25 kilometres away, twice a week. The Campaspe News is Rochester's own paper — a weekly written for one town and its hinterland within the Shire of Campaspe, carrying the council news, school and sporting life, farming intelligence and personal milestones that a shire-wide or regional title cannot carry in the same detail.

Its currency is a matter of current record: the paper appears in the Australian Press Council's constituent publications list of September 2026, styled "Campaspe News (Rochester)", and in Country Press Australia's member listings for central Victoria. Its publisher's portfolio describes it as a paper increasingly acting as a spokesman for a small town in hard times — a role that has defined it through Rochester's recent history of factory closure and catastrophic flooding.

History

The McPherson Media Group describes the Campaspe News as carrying "a proud heritage of more than 160 years", and dates its own stewardship from 1969, when it purchased the Rochester paper — the same year in which the group added Echuca's Riverine Herald to its suite of titles. Rochester's newspaper tradition is demonstrably old: a Rochester Express was publishing in the town in the early twentieth century, its editions of the First World War era surviving in newspaper archives. The precise line of succession between Rochester's early titles and the present paper is not set out in the sources consulted, so this profile records the publisher's heritage claim as its own and asserts no founding year for the Campaspe News itself.

The McPherson connection places the paper inside one of Victoria's oldest family newspaper businesses. The company began with Colin McPherson's purchase of the Shepparton News in 1888; his descendants have run it ever since, with Graeme Ross McPherson serving in recent years as executive chairman. In 2020 the group's papers moved their printing to Wodonga, on a press line acquired through the industry's consolidation, ending more than a century of printing at Shepparton. Through those changes the Rochester title has remained what it was when the McPhersons bought it: the weekly paper of a single Campaspe River town, produced within a group whose other mastheads include the Shepparton News, the Riverine Herald, the Kyabram Free Press, the Benalla Ensign, the Cobram Courier and the Seymour Telegraph.

Programming and Content

The Campaspe News covers Rochester's civic and community life: Campaspe Shire Council decisions and services, the town's schools, churches, sporting clubs and community groups, and the agricultural economy — dairy, tomatoes, cattle, sheep and cropping — on which Rochester's prosperity rests. Campaspe Shire Council's own residents' information kit records that its "Your Council News" page appears in the Campaspe News alongside the Riverine Herald and the Kyabram Free Press, a formal recognition of the paper's place in the shire's civic communication.

The defining story of the paper's recent years has been disaster and recovery. Rochester had already absorbed an economic blow with the closure of the Murray Goulburn dairy plant, one of the changes the publisher itself names as having reshaped the town. Then, in October 2022, the Campaspe River inundated Rochester in the largest flood in the town's recorded history: about 1,000 homes were flooded over floor level, and reporting at the time put the share of the community inundated at around 98 per cent. The politics of the aftermath ran for years in the paper's pages: in early 2025 the Member for Murray Plains, Peter Walsh, was still publicly demanding that the flood study covering the Campaspe at Rochester and Echuca be fast-tracked, noting that residents were approaching three years since the disaster with flood-affected houses still empty and insurance disputes unresolved. The McPherson Media Group describes the paper as spearheading the town's fightback — through the silo art project, the mural competition, the fine arts show, the campaign for a new school and advocacy for essential services — and championing local sport, social groups and the achievements of locals on the state, national and international stage. The recovery remained a live file through 2025: Campaspe Shire's Rochester Flood Study, examining the 2011, 2022 and 2024 flood events, ran community calibration sessions in May 2025, and the council's annual report for 2024–25 illustrates that work with a photograph credited to the Campaspe News — the paper still on the ground, documenting its town's attempt to protect itself from the next flood.

Audience and Reach

The paper's audience is Rochester and the district around it: a town of about 3,000 people, in the words of those who documented its flood recovery, within a predominantly agricultural shire of more than 36,000 residents whose main centres are Echuca, Kyabram, Rochester, Rushworth, Stanhope and Tongala. It is a defined, local readership rather than a regional one — the farmers, traders, school families and sporting clubs of the Rochester district, many of whom appear in its pages. No audited circulation figure for the title is published in the sources consulted, and none is claimed here. Its reach is evidenced in practice: the shire council places its community information in the paper as a matter of course, and Country Press Australia markets it to national advertisers in its central Victoria network alongside titles such as the Gannawarra Times, the Midland Express and the Rochester paper's own stablemates.

Digital Presence

The Campaspe News publishes online at campaspenews.com.au, the address recorded for it in Country Press Australia's filings, as part of the McPherson Media Group's digital network, which carries the group's titles on shared digital platforms with daily news updates between print editions. The group's stated direction in recent years has been digital-first for breaking news — its executive chairman has observed that most readers now read news online, and the group has invested in its app and newsletter offerings across its mastheads — while the printed Campaspe News continues to appear each Tuesday in Rochester.

Ownership and Organisation

The Campaspe News is owned by the McPherson Media Group and has been since 1969. The group is a family company controlled by the McPherson family of Shepparton, whose newspaper interests began with the Shepparton News in 1888 and extend across northern Victoria and the southern Riverina. Country Press Australia's 2021 authorisation filing records the Campaspe News under the McPherson Media Group at 74 Mackay Street, Rochester — the paper's office in the town it serves. One naming variant is worth recording for accuracy: some industry registers list the masthead in the form "Campaspe Valley News", while the publisher's own portfolio and the Australian Press Council's current list use the paper's own name, Campaspe News. As a Press Council constituent publication, the paper is bound by the council's standards of practice.

Contact and Availability

The Campaspe News is published every Tuesday and is available in print in Rochester and district and online at campaspenews.com.au. Its office, as recorded by Country Press Australia, is at 74 Mackay Street, Rochester VIC 3561. The McPherson Media Group's head office is at Shepparton, and the group publishes its portfolio of titles, including the Campaspe News, through its website at mmg.com.au, where advertising and contact channels for the paper are maintained.