About Mornington News

Mornington News

Overview

The Mornington News is a free weekly community newspaper serving the township of Mornington and its surrounding district on Victoria's Mornington Peninsula, including Mount Martha, Mount Eliza, Moorooduc and the townships between. Published by the Mornington Peninsula News Group (MPNG), it is one of the group's five free weekly newspapers, alongside the Frankston Times, Western Port News, Southern Peninsula News and the Chelsea Mordialloc Mentone News. It appears in print each week and online through the group's shared website, mpnews.com.au.

Mornington is the principal town of the peninsula's western shore, home to the Mornington Peninsula Shire's civic centre and its busiest shopping strip, and the paper's role reflects that status: it is the district's newspaper of general record for council decisions, planning debates, sport and community life. Its standing is recognised in the industry's own records — it appears in the Australian Press Council's current constituent publications list (September 2026) and in Country Press Australia's member listings — and it remains in active publication: its report on a closely fought Mornington Peninsula Shire Council vote in 2025 was carried in a national local-government news roundup, and its journalists were filing match coverage through the 2025–26 cricket season.

History

Mornington has had newspapers since the nineteenth century. Its first substantial title, the Mornington Standard, was founded in 1889 and circulated through Frankston, Mornington, Dromana and Somerville; renamed the Mornington and Dromana Standard in 1908, it was absorbed into the Standard Newspapers chain floated in 1925, which concentrated its peninsula publishing at Frankston, and the Mornington tradition effectively lapsed when the chain's Frankston successor ceased publication in 1949. Through the later twentieth century the district's community coverage came principally from News Limited's — later News Corp Australia's — Leader group of suburban mastheads.

The Mornington News belongs to the twenty-first century and to the Mornington Peninsula News Group, which by its own account was established in 2006. The group's founder and publisher, Cameron McCullough, grew up at Tyabb and bought a Hastings newsagency at the age of twenty; finding the local paper of the day insufficiently engaged with its community, he produced one himself — an eight-page newspaper run off on a photocopier and distributed in 3,000 copies — and built the business from the advertising enquiry that first issue generated. The enterprise grew organically into a suite of zoned weekly editions covering the peninsula and its surrounds, of which the Mornington News is the edition for the shire's principal town. The Mornington News was publishing by the middle of the 2010s at the latest, and its full print editions from that period — including a complete edition of 31 August 2021 preserved in community archives — show a mature weekly: a masthead declaring it "Proudly published by Mornington Peninsula News Group", crediting journalists Stephen Taylor and Brodie Cowburn and photographers Gary Sissons and Yanni, and stating that the paper was "Published weekly".

Two competitive shifts strengthened the paper's position. MPNG's peninsula rival, the Independent News group, was purchased by Fairfax, declined and eventually shut down; by McCullough's account roughly 80 per cent of MPNG's team are former Independent News staff. Then, in 2020, News Corp moved its Leader community titles — for decades the peninsula's suburban mastheads — to digital-only publication, ending their print presence. An MPNG spokesman responded that the group would "double-down on our efforts to keep locals informed in their absence", and the Mornington News and its stablemates remain in weekly print.

Programming and Content

The Mornington News covers the Mornington district's civic, sporting and community life. Council reporting is central: the paper's account of Mornington Peninsula Shire Council's 2025 decision to abandon its climate emergency declaration and the associated $11.7 million plan of action — carried by a narrow six-to-five vote — was picked up in the Local Government News Roundup's survey of council coverage around the country, the kind of scrutiny of local government that local papers exist to provide. Planning, roads, foreshore management and rate debates fill out the civic coverage, alongside the district's schools, clubs and community organisations.

Sport occupies a large place in the paper, as it does across the group. The Mornington Peninsula Cricket Association's 2025–26 season received ball-by-ball local attention in its pages, with match reports filed under the byline of the publisher himself, Cameron McCullough — a hands-on detail that says much about how the group is run. A distinctive feature of the paper over the years has been its local-history content: readers have noted its long-running practice of reprinting extracts from old newspapers, connecting today's Mornington with the district documented in the Mornington Standard more than a century ago. Local History Week activities, historical society news, letters and community notices round out a paper built to be read cover to cover by the town it names.

Audience and Reach

The Mornington News is distributed free to households across Mornington, Mount Martha, Mount Eliza, Moorooduc and the surrounding townships, funded entirely by advertising — as the group's publisher explains, all MPNG publications are free, so advertising sales are the company's sole source of income. A dated figure from the paper's own masthead gives a sense of its scale in print: its 31 August 2021 edition stated a circulation of 19,870, citing the AMAA/CAB Total Distribution Audit for the period October 2018 to March 2019. That audited figure is historical and is quoted here as such; no more recent audited circulation for the title is published in the sources consulted. The paper's audience is the settled population of the peninsula's most urban district — commuters, retirees, families and the traders of Mornington's Main Street — and its reliance on that audience is mutual: local businesses reach it through the paper, and event organisers are directed to it still, with Frankston Arts Centre's August 2026 guide listing the MPNG weeklies among current local print publications for advertising.

Digital Presence

The Mornington News publishes online through the Mornington Peninsula News Group website, mpnews.com.au, where its stories appear alongside those of the group's other newspapers and magazines. Its journalists' work is tracked by media-monitoring services, and its print editions are archived by community organisations, which is how full issues such as the August 2021 edition remain publicly readable. The group's publisher has said plainly that digital income is a small portion of turnover compared with print, and describes the group's future as being built on print with digital in a supporting role — a position the Mornington News' continued weekly print publication embodies.

Ownership and Organisation

The Mornington News is published by Mornington Peninsula News Group Pty Ltd, which describes itself as a locally owned and operated, independent media company established in 2006. Its founder and publisher, Cameron McCullough, remains closely involved in the product, contributing sports reporting to the paper in his own name. A detailed published profile of the business recorded a staff of 26 local professionals — journalists, photographers, designers and sales staff. The Mornington News is one of five free weeklies in the group, with the Frankston Times, Western Port News, Southern Peninsula News and Chelsea Mordialloc Mentone News; the group also publishes two magazines, the glossy monthly lifestyle title Peninsula Essence and the quarterly family magazine Peninsula Kids. A group advertising manager oversees advertising across the titles — Anton Hoffman held the role in 2026 — in keeping with the advertising-funded model.

Contact and Availability

The Mornington News is available free each week in print across the Mornington district and online at mpnews.com.au. Mornington Peninsula News Group can be contacted on 03 5974 9000, the number carried on the paper's own masthead; the group advertising manager's published email is anton@mpnews.com.au. Story tips, letters and community notices are welcomed through the group, and public notices appear in the paper's print editions.