About Northern Star Weekly

Northern Star Weekly

Overview

The Northern Star Weekly is a suburban weekly newspaper serving Melbourne's northern growth corridor in Victoria, Australia, centred on the City of Hume — Broadmeadows, the suburb recorded as this profile's base, together with Craigieburn, Greenvale, Mickleham and Roxburgh Park — with coverage extending into the neighbouring City of Whittlesea. It is a Star Weekly title, published within the Star News Group by MMP Star Pty Ltd, the group company that operates Star's Melbourne suburban mastheads. The Australian Communications and Media Authority's Register of eligible news businesses, in an entry dated 12 December 2025, lists the Northern Star Weekly as one of six newspaper mastheads of MMP Star Pty Ltd, against its website, northern.starweekly.com.au.

The paper publishes on Tuesdays, as dated editions and monitoring records confirm: a full edition of the paper is dated Tuesday 17 September 2024, Hume City Council's agenda of 14 July 2025 records a council public notice placed in the paper's edition of 4 February 2025, and media monitoring by Isentia recorded a general news story in the Northern Star Weekly on Tuesday 5 August 2025. The paper is also listed in the Australian Press Council's September 2026 constituent publications list. Whether the edition is distributed free or sold is not stated here, because the sources used for this profile do not document the paper's distribution terms; its status, publisher and weekly publication are, by contrast, firmly on the record.

History

The Northern Star Weekly is a product of Star News Group's expansion into Melbourne's northern suburbs in the early 2000s. The group's trade-press history records that in October 2004 Star launched five Star editions into the Hume, Whittlesea and Mitchell Shire areas, planting its suburban weekly model across the city's fast-growing northern fringe. The Northern Star Weekly, recorded in industry documents against the combined territory "Hume/Whittlesea", is the masthead that came out of that northern expansion, and it has served the Broadmeadows-centred district since.

Its publisher's lineage is considerably older than the paper itself. Star News Group descends from the Berwick newspaper business founded by Albert Edward Thomas in 1909 — the Berwick Shire News and the Pakenham and Cranbourne Gazette — and remains owned by the Thomas family. Paul Thomas, of the fourth generation, became the group's managing director in 2000 and led the suburban expansion of which the Northern Star Weekly was a part. The suburban Star Weekly operation was later organised under MMP Star Pty Ltd, the company named in the ACMA register as the operator of the six Star Weekly mastheads, with Paul Thomas as its registered contact.

The paper's operating footprint is documented in the Country Press Australia authorisation application lodged with the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission in April 2021, which lists "Hume/Whittlesea — Northern Star Weekly — Star Weekly Group" at Unit 6/109 Thomsons Road, Keilor Park, Victoria, against the Star Weekly web platform. The title's continuity from that record to the present is established by the council and electoral records of 2024–25 and the ACMA registration of December 2025.

Programming and Content

The Northern Star Weekly is a general suburban newspaper whose content is anchored in local government, community life and the concerns of a rapidly growing outer-metropolitan population. Council coverage is its documented backbone: Hume City Council places public notices in the paper — the council's July 2025 agenda formally records a notice published in the 4 February 2025 edition — and the Victorian Electoral Commission's report on the City of Hume's 2024 elections nominated the Northern Star Weekly as a publication for council notices, a formal acknowledgement of its role as a paper of record for the municipality.

Its journalism is bylined and locally specific. Reporter Laura Michell's work for the paper, tracked on the Muck Rack journalist database, includes coverage of the federal funding announcement of 24 March 2025 for the Donnybrook Road upgrade at Craigieburn, announced by Prime Minister Anthony Albanese, and of a proposed Ramadan market for Broadmeadows. The same byline file shows the paper covering Whittlesea council business, including the council meeting of July 2025 — evidence that, as the industry listing "Hume/Whittlesea" indicates, the paper's news net takes in both municipalities, not Hume alone. General news from the paper is captured by Isentia's media monitoring, which recorded a page-eight Northern Star Weekly story on 5 August 2025, confirming its print edition's presence in the monitoring record.

Audience and Reach

The paper's audience is the population of Melbourne's north: the City of Hume, one of Victoria's fastest-growing municipalities, spanning established suburbs such as Broadmeadows, Jacana and Glenroy's northern neighbours through to the new estates of Craigieburn, Mickleham and Greenvale, and the adjoining City of Whittlesea. Broadmeadows, the profile's base suburb, is Hume's civic and commercial centre, home to the council's principal offices and the district's transport interchange.

No audited circulation figure for the Northern Star Weekly is published, and none is claimed here. Its reach is evidenced instead by the formal roles it holds in its district: it is a nominated publication for City of Hume public notices in the Victorian Electoral Commission's 2024 election report, it carries council advertising and notices recorded in Hume City Council's own agendas, and it is one of only six mastheads registered to MMP Star Pty Ltd in the ACMA register. Its inclusion in the Australian Press Council's September 2026 constituent list further confirms its standing as a continuing suburban publication.

Digital Presence

The paper's digital home is northern.starweekly.com.au, its own section of the Star Weekly platform that Star News Group operates for its suburban mastheads; the ACMA register records that exact address as the Northern Star Weekly's news source link. The platform model means the paper's stories are published online under its own masthead branding and address while sharing the group's common digital infrastructure with its five MMP Star sister titles — the Wyndham, Brimbank North West, Maribyrnong Hobsons Bay and Melton Moorabool Star Weeklies and the Sunbury Macedon Ranges title. The April 2021 country press application already pointed the Northern Star Weekly at the starweekly.com.au platform, showing the arrangement predates the paper's current ACMA registration by several years.

Ownership and Organisation

The Northern Star Weekly is published by MMP Star Pty Ltd (ABN 46 168 220 399), the Star News Group company responsible for the group's Melbourne suburban weekly mastheads. The ACMA Register of eligible news businesses entry for MMP Star, dated 12 December 2025, lists six newspaper mastheads — the Wyndham Star Weekly, Brimbank North West Star Weekly, Maribyrnong Hobsons Bay Star Weekly, Melton Moorabool Star Weekly, the Northern Star Weekly and Sunbury Macedon Ranges — and names Paul Thomas as the company's contact (telephone 03 5945 0666; email paul.thomas@starnewsgroup.com.au).

Star News Group itself is a family company: it grew from Albert Edward Thomas's 1909 Berwick newspapers and is led by managing director Paul Thomas, the fourth generation of the family in the business. The group's operations span suburban weeklies in Melbourne, community titles and the Today group of papers in Queensland and South Australia. Within that structure the Northern Star Weekly sits in the suburban arm, produced from the Star Weekly Group's Keilor Park base recorded in the 2021 industry application.

Contact and Availability

The Northern Star Weekly is published by MMP Star Pty Ltd of Star News Group; the group's registered contact is Paul Thomas (telephone 03 5945 0666; email paul.thomas@starnewsgroup.com.au), and the Star Weekly Group's address is recorded in industry listings as Unit 6/109 Thomsons Road, Keilor Park, Victoria 3042. The paper's website is northern.starweekly.com.au. It publishes weekly, on Tuesdays, in print and online, for Broadmeadows, the City of Hume and the adjoining Whittlesea district of Melbourne's north.