About Cranbourne Star News

Cranbourne Star News

Overview

The Cranbourne Star News is a weekly community newspaper serving Cranbourne and the surrounding suburbs of the City of Casey, in Melbourne's outer south-east growth corridor. Published on Thursdays, it covers one of the fastest-growing municipalities in Australia, reporting on Casey City Council, planning and development, schools, community organisations and local sport across Cranbourne, Cranbourne East, Cranbourne North, Cranbourne South and Cranbourne West, and neighbouring localities including Clyde, Clyde North, Devon Meadows, Hampton Park, Lynbrook, Lyndhurst and Junction Village.

The newspaper is published by Star News Group Pty Ltd, the Pakenham-based, Thomas family-owned company whose titles blanket Melbourne's south-east. The Australian Communications and Media Authority's Register of Eligible News Businesses lists the Cranbourne Star News among the 17 news sources registered to Star News Group Pty Ltd (ABN 98 238 557 339) on 6 January 2026, with its content link given as cranbournenews.starcommunity.com.au. The paper's continuing operation is independently documented in 2026: the City of Casey's council meeting papers of 26 May 2026 record that the council's draft corporate planning documents were "advertised in the Berwick and Cranbourne Star News" on Thursday 23 April 2026, the statutory advertising role that metropolitan community papers continue to perform for their municipalities. The title also appears in the Australian Press Council's September 2026 list of constituent publications.

History

The Cranbourne Star News belongs to one of Australia's oldest family newspaper businesses. Star's own lineage begins in 1909, when Albert Edward Thomas founded the Berwick Shire News and Pakenham and Cranbourne Gazette; the company that grew from that paper — for many years known as South East Newspapers — was renamed Star News Group in August 2005 to reflect the growth of the company and the diversity of the regions it covers. The group remains owned by the Thomas family and is managed by Paul Thomas, a fourth-generation member of the family, who serves as managing director.

The exact year in which the Cranbourne masthead itself took its present Star News form is not stated in the governing records consulted for this profile, and no launch date for the title is asserted here. Cranbourne was for decades a semi-rural town on Melbourne's fringe — its name carried in the founding 1909 masthead's "Pakenham and Cranbourne Gazette" — and its explosive growth into a major suburban centre drove the development of a dedicated local paper. By March 2018 the Cranbourne Star News was established under that name, and it has continued as Casey's Cranbourne-district weekly through the corridor's continued expansion. In December 2022 Star agreed to purchase 14 further publications from Australian Community Media in Queensland and South Australia, extending the group well beyond its Victorian heartland while the Cranbourne title remained part of its core south-east Melbourne stable.

Programming and Content

Council and planning coverage is the backbone of the Cranbourne Star News. The City of Casey is one of Victoria's largest municipalities, and the paper reports its meetings, budgets, planning scheme amendments and precinct structure plans in detail; local media summaries record the paper reporting, for example, on the council's submission concerning the Casey Fields South Employment and Devon Meadows Precinct Structure Plan and the cost concerns surrounding the Ballarto Road roundabout project. Development is a permanent theme in a corridor of new estates: rezoning proposals, golf-course redevelopment, places of worship and service infrastructure all pass through its pages.

Election coverage is a speciality. The paper publishes candidate profiles and ward-by-ward guides for Casey council elections — its "Meet the Casey Council candidates" coverage of the Correa Ward was published on 3 October 2024 ahead of that year's local elections — and reports state and federal contests in the Cranbourne area. Community news covers schools, kindergartens, sporting clubs, service organisations and local business, while sport ranges from the Casey Demons in the VFL to suburban football, cricket and netball in the Cranbourne district. The paper's photography has been recognised by its peers: at the Victorian Country Press Association's 2023 awards, the judges named the Cranbourne Star News winner of Best News Photo in the circulation-over-6,000 class for photographer Rob Carew's image "Lantern Lights Up Lynbrook", described by the judges as a beautiful moment that encapsulated the joy and togetherness of the local community. Content is also shared within the group: academic sampling of Star's Casey titles has found Cranbourne Star News council coverage carried by its sister paper, the Berwick Star News.

Audience and Reach

The paper's audience is the population of Cranbourne and the Casey growth corridor — long-established residents, new estate communities and the businesses that serve them. Statutory and community advertising patterns indicate its role: the City of Casey places public notices in the Cranbourne Star News alongside its own consultation portal, relying on the paper to reach residents across the municipality. Star News Group states that its community newspapers have a combined circulation of more than 500,000 copies per week; that is the company's figure for the whole group, not for this title, and no separate audited circulation for the Cranbourne Star News is published in the records consulted, so none is claimed here. The title's individual scale is nonetheless indicated by its award classification: the Victorian Country Press Association judged its photography in the class for newspapers with a circulation over 6,000.

Digital Presence

The Cranbourne Star News publishes online at cranbournenews.starcommunity.com.au, one of the Star Community network of masthead sites operated by Star News Group from Pakenham. Stories from the print edition are published to the site, which sits alongside the group's other south-east titles, including the Berwick Star News, the Pakenham Gazette and the Dandenong Star Journal, allowing Casey-wide stories to travel across the group's platforms. The Australian Communications and Media Authority register gives the paper's content link in exactly this form — cranbournenews.starcommunity.com.au — confirming the masthead site as the title's registered digital home. The paper's stories are also cited and indexed by third parties, from the City of Casey's own records to Wikipedia's municipal references, reflecting its role as the district's paper of record.

Ownership and Organisation

The Cranbourne Star News is owned and published by Star News Group Pty Ltd, headquartered at Pakenham in Melbourne's south-east. Star is owned by the Thomas family, descendants of founder Albert Edward Thomas, and is managed by managing director Paul Thomas, the fourth generation of the family to lead the company; the Australian Communications and Media Authority register names Paul Thomas as the contact for the registered news business. In Victoria the group produces the Pakenham Gazette, Berwick Gazette, Pakenham Officer Star News, Berwick Star News, Cranbourne Star News, Dandenong Star Journal and Endeavour Hills Hallam Doveton Star Journal in the south-east, the Star Mail titles in the Yarra Valley and Dandenong Ranges, the Star Weekly titles in Melbourne's west and north through MMP Star Pty Ltd, and the Geelong Independent and Ocean Grove Voice; it is also a founder and partner of the Today News Group in Queensland and South Australia. The Cranbourne title is a constituent publication of the Australian Press Council, listed in the Council's September 2026 register of publications.

Contact and Availability

The Cranbourne Star News is published weekly on Thursdays and distributed across Cranbourne and the City of Casey. Star News Group's head office is in Pakenham, and the group can be contacted by phone on (03) 5945 0666. The paper's website is cranbournenews.starcommunity.com.au, where current stories from the Cranbourne district, together with the group's other Casey coverage, can be read. Public notices for the City of Casey continue to be advertised in the paper's print editions, as recorded in council papers in April 2026.