About Southern Peninsula News

Southern Peninsula News

Overview

The Southern Peninsula News is a free weekly community newspaper serving the southern end of Victoria's Mornington Peninsula — the district centred on Rosebud and taking in Dromana and Safety Beach, the hinterland townships of Red Hill and Boneo, and Rye, Blairgowrie, Sorrento and Portsea toward the Heads. It is published by the Mornington Peninsula News Group (MPNG), the locally owned independent company whose five free weekly newspapers divide the peninsula and its surrounds into district editions: the Frankston Times, Mornington News, Western Port News, Southern Peninsula News and Chelsea Mordialloc Mentone News. It appears in print each week and online through the group's shared website, mpnews.com.au.

The Southern Peninsula News is a distinct masthead with its own district, not an edition of any other title: the group itself lists it as one of its five newspapers, and it stands in the industry's current records in its own right — in the Australian Press Council's constituent publications list of September 2026 and in Country Press Australia's member listings, including the association's recent submission to the federal government on the news bargaining incentive. Its district is the peninsula's holiday coast, where a settled population of retirees, families and traders swells each summer, and the paper's role follows from that: it is the printed record of council decisions, planning fights, surf and sporting clubs, schools and community life for the towns along the Nepean Highway from Dromana to Portsea.

History

Newspapers have served the southern peninsula since the nineteenth century, when titles such as the Mornington Standard circulated through Dromana and the surrounding townships, but the Southern Peninsula 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 its suite of zoned weekly editions, of which the Southern Peninsula News is the edition for the peninsula's southern shore.

The title was established by 2010: its issues of July 2010 are cited in local-history research drawing on the paper's own pages, including a full-page feature on a pioneering Rye family in its edition of 17 July 2010, and its editions of 2013 — among them a Rye township anniversary edition and its issue of 25 July 2013 — are similarly preserved in community archives. Readers of that era noted the paper's character: a strong line in local-history material, humour, and a critical eye kept on Mornington Peninsula Shire. Two competitive shifts strengthened its 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; when the Mornington Leader's print era later closed altogether, an MPNG spokesman said the group would "double-down on our efforts to keep locals informed in their absence". No founding date for the Southern Peninsula News itself is documented in the sources consulted, and none is asserted here.

Programming and Content

The Southern Peninsula News covers its district's civic, sporting and community life. Council reporting is central — Mornington Peninsula Shire decisions on planning, roads, foreshore management and local services — and the paper's watchdog posture toward the shire was remarked on by readers long before the group's other rivals fell away. Its recent district coverage, published through the group's website, shows the spread: residents of St Andrews Beach campaigning over the state of their local roads, with the shire confirming no resurfacing was planned; a Rosebud Football Netball Club story tracing how two netballers turned personal cancer diagnoses into a support partnership reaching dozens of peninsula families; a Rye resident and charity founder honoured for three decades of work with families of children with brain conditions; a Dromana Secondary College basketballer's record 51-point game at Rosebud Stadium; and a regional film festival program bringing a dozen films to the cinema at Rosebud.

A distinctive feature of the paper over the years has been its local-history content: it has run extracts from the district's old newspapers and full-page historical features on the families and industries — lime-burning, fishing, farming — that built the southern peninsula's towns, and it marks the district's anniversaries with special editions, as it did for Rye's township anniversary. Sport occupies a large place, from the Mornington Peninsula Nepean Football League clubs at Rosebud, Dromana, Rye and Sorrento to sailing, bowls and junior sport, and the summer influx brings its own coverage: schoolies, holiday safety, foreshore and beach news. Letters, community notices and the district's dense calendar of club and volunteer activity round out the paper.

Audience and Reach

The Southern Peninsula News is distributed free to households across its district — Rosebud, Dromana, Safety Beach, McCrae, Red Hill, Boneo, Rye, Blairgowrie, Sorrento and Portsea and the rural country between — 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. No audited circulation figure for this individual title is published in the sources consulted, and none is claimed here; the paper's audience is the southern peninsula's settled community, one of the older populations in Victoria, together with the holiday-makers and second-home owners who read it in season. Its standing with local institutions is visible in the way they use it: event organisers are directed to the MPNG weeklies as current local print publications in guides as recent as August 2026, and the group's journalists' reporting from the district is tracked by national media-monitoring services.

Digital Presence

The Southern Peninsula News publishes online through the Mornington Peninsula News Group website, mpnews.com.au, where its district's stories appear alongside those of the group's other newspapers and its magazines, Peninsula Essence and Peninsula Kids. 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 Southern Peninsula News' continued weekly print publication embodies. Its print editions are preserved by community and family-history researchers, which is how its issues from 2010 onwards remain publicly readable.

Ownership and Organisation

The Southern Peninsula 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 across the group in his own name. A detailed published profile of the business recorded a staff of 26 local professionals — journalists, photographers, designers and sales staff — working across the group's titles, with journalists and photographers filing for more than one masthead. The Southern Peninsula News is one of five free weeklies in the group, with the Frankston Times, Mornington News, Western Port 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 Southern Peninsula News is available free each week in print across the southern Mornington Peninsula and online at mpnews.com.au. Mornington Peninsula News Group can be contacted on 03 5974 9000, the number carried on the group's mastheads; 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.