About Seymour Telegraph

Seymour Telegraph

Overview

The Seymour Telegraph is a weekly community newspaper serving Seymour and the southern Goulburn Valley towns of Nagambie, Avenel, Puckapunyal and Tallarook in Victoria's Mitchell Shire and surrounds. It is published each Wednesday by the McPherson Media Group, the Shepparton-based family newspaper company, and is one of the group's eleven registered newspaper mastheads. The Telegraph covers the civic and community life of its district — council decisions, schools, sport, agriculture and local business — for a group of towns linked by the Goulburn River, the Hume Freeway corridor and a shared sporting and farming culture.

McPherson Media Group describes the paper's role in its own words: the weekly "services the towns of Seymour, Nagambie, Avenel, Puckapunyal and Tallarook, bringing the communities together by celebrating achievements and sharing issues, along with some friendly sporting rivalry", with community-focused journalists who cover the serious topics while emphasising "the community chat and information that has the most impact on keeping the communities connected and engaged".

History

A newspaper under the Seymour Telegraph name was being published in Seymour by the 1890s: copies of the Telegraph survive from the years 1892 to 1901, and McPherson Media Group describes the present paper as 128 years old. The Telegraph's modern history is bound up with the McPherson family's expansion from Shepparton. The McPherson company traces itself to Colin McPherson's purchase of the Shepparton News in 1888, and the Seymour Telegraph holds a particular place in that story: in the group's own account, the Telegraph was, in 1961, "the first paper, outside of Shepparton, the McPherson Media Group purchased" — the acquisition that began its growth into a multi-title regional publisher.

The group has remained in family hands across five generations. Chris McPherson, who led the company in its modern era, died in 2015; a fifth-generation director, James McPherson, joined the board in 2016 and, as the company records, "cut his teeth in publishing relief editing the Cobram Courier and Seymour Telegraph"; he also chairs the Biggest Ever Blokes' Lunch in Melbourne, the prostate-cancer fundraising format his father launched in 2009. Since 2020 the group's newspapers, including the Telegraph, have been printed at Wodonga on the Victoria–New South Wales border, on the double-width Goss Uniliner press line McPherson Media acquired there from Australian Community Media; the Wodonga site had originally been developed as a partnership between the Mott family's Border Mail and two other independent publishers. Through those changes of ownership era, printing site and technology, the Telegraph has continued as the district's Wednesday weekly.

Programming and Content

The Telegraph's content is the standard country-weekly mix, weighted to its district: Mitchell Shire Council and community news, court and emergency-services reporting, school and club news, real estate and rural reporting, and extensive local sport across the Seymour, Nagambie, Avenel and Tallarook clubs. Its patch includes the Puckapunyal military base, one of the district's largest employers, and a farming hinterland that its publisher describes as servicing "the agricultural industries that surround it including equine, cattle, sheep and wine".

The paper's recent reporting shows that mix in action. In April 2026 its journalist Jemma Jones reported Campaspe Shire Council's decision to approve an expansion of the Midland Bacon pig farm at Carag Carag despite more than 4,000 objections — a contested rural-industry planning story of the kind the Telegraph routinely covers across its district. In May 2025 the group's Shepp Happens podcast featured Telegraph journalist Billie Davern telling the story of Seymour's Royal Hotel, the town's oldest pub, drawing on the paper's local-history knowledge. Monitoring services also carry Telegraph-bylined community items, such as CareFlight's infant-care workshop for Seymour families. McPherson journalists work across the group's titles, and bylines from the Telegraph's newsroom appear in sister papers across the Goulburn Valley.

The staples of the paper's coverage over the years are visible in its journalists' published portfolios: reporting of a prolonged power outage across Avenel and Nagambie, when an underground cable fault left households without supply for more than 20 hours and residents sought compensation for spoiled food; public-health coverage of immunisation rates in the Mitchell Shire community, which health officials publicly praised for its vaccination efforts; and the routine round of council meetings, school events, court sittings and weekend sport that binds the five towns of its patch into a single readership.

Audience and Reach

The Telegraph's readership is the population of Seymour and its surrounding towns — a district anchored by a major regional service town on the Goulburn River, the Puckapunyal army base, and farming communities along the river flats and in the foothills toward Tallarook. Mitchell Shire Council's economic development strategy identifies the Puckapunyal Army Barracks, the hospitals at Seymour and Kilmore and the shire's schools among the district's major employers, with public administration and safety the shire's largest employing industry — a profile that shapes the paper's audience of defence families, health and education workers, farmers and small businesses. Seymour is also a sporting town: its racing club holds around twenty meetings a year, including the Seymour Cup each October, and the football, netball and cricket rivalries between Seymour, Nagambie, Avenel and Tallarook supply the paper with one of its most-read staples. McPherson Media Group states a total monthly readership for the Seymour Telegraph of 32,250 across combined print and digital; that figure is the publisher's own, published on its brand page for the title, and is recorded here as such. No independently audited circulation figure for the paper is published in the sources consulted.

Digital Presence

The Telegraph publishes online at seymourtelegraph.com.au, where its news, sport and community content appears alongside that of the wider McPherson network. The paper's stories are picked up by news-monitoring services under the Seymour Telegraph byline, and its journalists contribute to group digital products such as the Shepp Happens podcast, an McPherson Media Group production hosted by the Shepparton News team, which was still releasing weekly episodes in late 2025. McPherson sells subscriptions across its titles in print and digital form, including digital replica e-editions of the printed papers released in line with the regular publishing schedule. The website is the paper's daily presence between its Wednesday print editions.

Ownership and Organisation

The Seymour Telegraph is published by McPherson Newspapers Pty Ltd (ABN 89 004 522 794), trading as the McPherson Media Group, the family-owned publisher headquartered at Shepparton. The group registered its news business with the ACMA on 15 November 2024 with eleven newspaper mastheads — the Shepparton News, Benalla Ensign, Deniliquin Pastoral Times, Kyabram Free Press, Seymour Telegraph, Campaspe Valley News, Cobram Courier, Riverine Herald, Southern Riverina News, Yarrawonga Chronicle and Corowa Free Press. The McPherson group is one of Australia's significant remaining independent regional publishers: a family company built from its 1888 Shepparton base, led in the current era by executive chairman Graeme Ross McPherson, printing its titles at Wodonga since 2020. The ACMA register names Antonio Borrelli as the group's contact, on 03 5820 3117, with the email antonio.borrelli@mmg.com.au.

Contact and Availability

The Seymour Telegraph is published in print each Wednesday and online at seymourtelegraph.com.au. It serves Seymour, Nagambie, Avenel, Puckapunyal and Tallarook. Its publisher is the McPherson Media Group of Shepparton; the contact listed for the group on the ACMA Register of Eligible News Businesses is Antonio Borrelli, telephone 03 5820 3117, email antonio.borrelli@mmg.com.au.