About Narrandera Argus

Narrandera Argus

Overview

The Narrandera Argus is a weekly newspaper published in Narrandera, a town on the Murrumbidgee River in the Riverina region of New South Wales, Australia. First published in 1880, it is one of the long-running country newspapers of New South Wales, and it continues to publish in print and digital form. The paper serves Narrandera and the surrounding Riverina district, a farming region known for irrigation agriculture and rice growing, and its reporting centres on the town's council, schools, courts, sporting clubs, churches and rural industries.

The Argus is recorded in the Australian Communications and Media Authority's Register of eligible news businesses, in an entry dated 17 December 2025, as a newspaper masthead of North East Media Pty Ltd, the Wangaratta-based publishing company owned by the Higgins family. Its current operation is readily verifiable: a digital edition of the paper dated Thursday, 20 August 2026 was published on its website, and its recent reporting includes coverage of a restructure at rice processor SunRice, the response to an H5 bird flu detection affecting the Riverina chicken industry, and Narrandera High School's NAIDOC Day celebrations.

History

The paper was first published in 1880 under the title The Narandera Argus and Riverina Advertiser. The spelling "Narandera", with a single "r" in the middle, was the standard rendering of the town's name in the nineteenth century and was retained in the newspaper's name long after the town settled on "Narrandera". The founder and first proprietor was John Andrew. In his final editorial in March 1888 Andrew farewelled his readers, and on 1 April 1888 the paper passed to the partnership of Johnston and Ashton for a reported price of £2,000.

James Ashton became sole proprietor in 1892 and published the Argus through the last decade of the nineteenth century. Ashton went on to a prominent career in New South Wales politics as a member of parliament and minister, and his years at the Argus form part of his biography in the Australian Dictionary of Biography. The paper was later published by Donald M'Neil Turner. From 1886 the Argus faced a local rival, the Narrandera Ensign, and the two papers took opposite sides of the great trade debate of the colonial era: as press historian Rod Kirkpatrick records in Country Conscience, his history of the New South Wales provincial press, the Ensign promoted protectionism while the Argus promoted free trade.

The paper carried its long original title for more than seventy years. In 1953, according to the State Library of New South Wales catalogue record, the title was shortened to the Narrandera Argus, the name it still carries. Editions of the paper published between 1893 and 1953 have been digitised as part of the Australian Newspapers Digitisation Program of the National Library of Australia and can be read on Trove, the library's online discovery service.

For most of its life the Argus was an independent local paper, and it still described itself that way well into the twenty-first century: the masthead of its edition of Wednesday, 11 March 2020 read "Your local independent newspaper – established 1880", above a cover price of $1.70. At some point after that date the paper moved into the North East Media group. The date and circumstances of that change of ownership are not documented in the public sources consulted for this profile, and no acquisition announcement has been sighted; what is documented is the paper's present position in the group, recorded in the media authority's register in December 2025.

Programming and Content

The Argus is a general-interest community newspaper whose content is built around the life of Narrandera and its district. Its news pages cover Narrandera Shire Council, local schools, community organisations, church life, police and court matters, and the agricultural industries on which the district depends. Agriculture coverage is a substantial part of the mix: in 2026 the paper reported the confirmation that 78 jobs would go in a restructure at SunRice, the Riverina rice milling company, and the federal political intervention that followed, as well as calls for urgent action to protect the Riverina chicken industry after an H5 bird flu detection in the region. Education and community reporting includes items such as Narrandera High School's NAIDOC Day program and the induction of a new Anglican priest serving Leeton and Narrandera.

Sport has a long-standing place in the paper, from district cricket — the paper's archive features include the O'Farrell Cup competition centred on Wagga Wagga — to local football and community sport. A distinctive feature is its local-history writing: the Argus publishes a regular "Step back in time" series drawing on its own back issues, revisiting subjects such as the Lake Talbot water tower, pioneering horsemen of the district and the Riverina Express trains of the 1950s. Alongside its news and features, the paper carries the classified advertising, family notices and community announcements expected of a small country weekly.

Audience and Reach

The paper's readership is concentrated in Narrandera and the farming communities around it. In its own "About us" material, retrieved from its website in 2015, the Argus described a circulation of 2,000 copies distributed across eight Riverina towns and localities: Narrandera, Leeton, Yanco, Griffith, Coolamon, Ganmain, Matong and Grong Grong. That figure is the paper's own claim from that period and is presented here as such; no independently audited current circulation figure for the paper has been sighted. The same material described the paper in that period as publishing twice weekly, on Tuesdays and Thursdays, although its print editions have also appeared on other days — the March 2020 edition sighted for this profile was a Wednesday issue — and its digital editions in 2026 have appeared on Thursdays. Readers can also follow the paper through its website and its digital editions, which extend its reach beyond the print distribution area to former residents and others with Riverina connections.

Digital Presence

The Argus publishes online at narranderaargus.com.au, where it offers news stories and full digital editions of the newspaper. The site operates on a subscription basis for much of its content: articles indexed from the site in 2026 carry the notice "Subscribe to Narrandera Argus to read the full story", and digital editions are published for subscribers, including the edition of Thursday, 20 August 2026. The paper's online development was recognised within the industry earlier in the decade: the Argus was one of the regional publishers featured as a case study in the Google News Initiative's Project Kookaburra in 2020, a program examining how small regional newsrooms could build digital audiences and revenue. Its journalism is also tracked by the Muck Rack media database, which indexes its current stories and the profiles of its journalists, providing an independent window on its continuing output.

Ownership and Organisation

The Narrandera Argus is published by North East Media Pty Ltd (ABN 65 006 238 277), according to the Australian Communications and Media Authority's Register of eligible news businesses, in an entry dated 17 December 2025 that classifies the Argus as one of twenty newspaper mastheads registered to the company. North East Media is the Wangaratta-based company of the Higgins family, whose newspaper interests in north-east Victoria began when W. T. Higgins bought the Wangaratta Despatch in 1921 and the Wangaratta Chronicle in 1937. The register entry names Edward Hartley Higgins as the company's contact. The group's registered mastheads include the Wangaratta Chronicle, the Mansfield Courier, the Euroa Gazette, the Monaro Post and a number of other New South Wales country titles, among them the Gundagai Independent, the Cowra Guardian, the Forbes Advocate, the Grenfell Record and the Boorowa News.

At the Narrandera end, the paper's best-known editorial figure is Liz Lawrence, who began her career at the Argus as a cadet journalist on 23 May 1966 and was still its managing editor when the ABC marked her fifty years with the paper in 2016. Journalists whose bylines and photographic credits have appeared in the paper's recent output include Peter Mahoney, Kim Woods and Claire Williams.

Contact and Availability

The Narrandera Argus has been based at 167 East Street, Narrandera, New South Wales 2700, and its listed telephone number is (02) 6959 2222. The paper has published the email addresses editor@narranderaargus.com.au, editorial@narranderaargus.com.au and editorial2@narranderaargus.com.au for news and editorial contact. The print edition is sold locally in Narrandera and the surrounding district towns, and the paper's website offers subscriptions giving access to its online stories and digital editions, making the current edition available to readers anywhere. Readers preparing to visit or contact the office are advised to confirm the current address, publication day and contact details on the paper's website, as small country newspapers adjust these arrangements from time to time.