About Tasmanian Country

Tasmanian Country

Tasmanian Country is a weekly rural newspaper published in Hobart, Tasmania, serving the state's farming and primary-industry communities. It is Tasmania's dedicated agricultural newspaper — covering dairying, beef and sheep production, cropping, horticulture, forestry, fishing and the rural economy — and it circulates to farm households and agribusinesses across the island. First published in 1980, it has appeared continuously for more than four decades. Long published by News Corp Australia's Tasmanian operation, the title was sold by News Corp to FontPR, the Hobart-based publishing and communications company that also publishes the Sorell Times.

Overview

Tasmania's agricultural sector is one of the most diverse in Australia: dairying in the north-west and north-east, beef cattle across the Midlands, sheep for wool and meat, vegetable and poppy cropping, cherries, berries and apples, salmon aquaculture, and plantation forestry. Tasmanian Country exists to serve the people who work this land and water. Where the metropolitan dailies treat agriculture as one round among many, Tasmanian Country treats it as the whole story: commodity prices, seasonal conditions, biosecurity, water policy, farm technology, rural finance, and the politics — state and federal — that shape farm gate returns.

As a weekly, the paper follows the rhythm of rural publishing: a single substantial edition each week that farmers read as both news and trade reference. Its readership is concentrated but influential — farm owners and managers, agronomists, stock agents, rural suppliers, processors and policymakers — and its advertising pages carry the machinery, livestock, rural property and input suppliers for whom Tasmanian farmers are the target market.

History

Tasmanian Country began publication in 1980, entering a Tasmanian rural-press landscape that had long been served by general country newspapers but lacked a dedicated statewide agricultural title. It was established as a weekly rural newspaper and became part of the Tasmanian publishing stable centred on The Mercury in Hobart. Through the 1980s and beyond it was published by Davies Brothers Pty Ltd, the News Limited (later News Corp Australia) subsidiary that owned The Mercury, alongside the weekly regional Derwent Valley Gazette — both titles having been acquired from independent publishers in the early 1980s — and the monthly travel magazine Treasure Island.

For decades Tasmanian Country was the rural voice within News Corp's Tasmanian operation, complementing the Mercury's general coverage with specialist agricultural journalism. The paper documented the transformation of Tasmanian agriculture across four decades: the deregulation era, the growth of dairying into a major export industry, the rise of salmon aquaculture into the state's most valuable primary industry, the expansion of irrigation schemes, the cherry and berry booms, the forestry wars, and the consolidation of farm businesses. In a significant ownership change, News Corp Australia sold Tasmanian Country to FontPR, the Hobart publishing company behind the Sorell Times and other community titles — moving the state's rural weekly from a national group into independent Tasmanian ownership.

Programming and Content

Tasmanian Country's editorial content is organised around the agricultural calendar and the rural economy. Core coverage includes commodity markets and prices — livestock sales, dairy payouts, wool, and horticultural returns — seasonal reporting on rainfall, irrigation allocations and harvest conditions, and the science and technology of farming: genetics, pasture management, precision agriculture, biosecurity and pest and disease outbreaks. Farm business coverage spans rural finance, succession planning, farm sales and the economics of scale driving consolidation.

Rural politics is a major beat: water policy and irrigation development, forestry regulation, animal welfare standards, trade agreements and biosecurity funding, and the state and federal budgets as they affect the bush. The paper also covers the rural community — agricultural shows, field days, Young Farmer competitions, rural women's networks, and the social fabric of country towns — alongside farm safety, rural health and education, and the infrastructure (roads, bridges, telecommunications, energy) on which country Tasmania depends. Its letters pages give farmers a forum for the industry's perennial debates, from supermarket pricing power to the balance between agriculture, forestry and conservation.

Coverage and Audience

Tasmanian Country circulates statewide, reaching farm households in every Tasmanian agricultural district: the dairying country of Circular Head and the north-west coast, the vegetable and cropping districts around Devonport and the north, the beef and sheep country of the Midlands and the Derwent Valley, the orchards and vineyards of the Huon and the Tamar, and the fishing and aquaculture communities of the coasts. Its audience is the most agriculturally literate in the state — people who read market reports as carefully as news stories — and its journalism is written for readers who know the difference between a good season and a bad one.

The paper's influence extends beyond the farm gate: policymakers, industry bodies, researchers and agribusiness executives read it as the record of Tasmanian rural opinion, and its reporting on issues like water allocations, forestry conflicts and biosecurity incursions frequently sets the agenda for broader media coverage. For advertisers — machinery dealers, stock firms, rural merchandisers, banks and insurers — it remains the most targeted print channel to Tasmania's farming community. The paper's classified and display pages function as a rural marketplace: livestock for sale, machinery and equipment, rural property listings, employment and tender notices — the commercial infrastructure of Tasmanian agriculture condensed into a weekly edition. In an era when rural towns have lost bank branches, stock agents and other services, the paper's role as a connector of buyers and sellers has, if anything, grown more important.

Ownership

Tasmanian Country is now owned by FontPR (Font Publishing), the Hobart-based independent publisher, following its sale by News Corp Australia. It was previously published for decades by Davies Brothers Pty Ltd as part of News Corp Australia's Tasmanian operation, alongside The Mercury. The move to FontPR places the state's rural weekly under the same independent Tasmanian ownership as the Sorell Times, continuing the paper's Hobart publishing base while changing its corporate home from a national group to a local publisher. The transition reflects a broader pattern in Australian regional media: as the national groups have retreated from specialist and community titles, independent publishers — often with deep local roots — have taken them on. For Tasmanian Country's readers, the practical consequence is continuity: the same weekly rhythm, the same agricultural brief, now published by a Tasmanian company whose other titles serve Tasmanian communities. The paper's printing arrangements have also reflected its ownership journey — at one point printed at the Mercury Print Centre at Dowsing Point, then moved, then returned — the logistical footnote to a title that has kept publishing through every change in the industry around it.

Digital Presence

As a specialist rural title, Tasmanian Country's primary product is its weekly print edition, distributed to farm households and rural businesses across Tasmania and available through rural newsagents and subscription. Its publisher FontPR maintains the title's public presence through its publishing operations in Hobart. Like other Australian agricultural newspapers, the paper's journalism serves a readership that values the printed weekly as a reference — market tables, sale results and seasonal guides kept and filed — even as rural readers increasingly access news digitally. The paper's four-decade archive constitutes one of the most complete published records of modern Tasmanian agriculture. For researchers, policymakers and industry historians, its back issues trace the arc of the state's rural transformation — the debates, the droughts, the booms and the policy shifts — in the words of the people who lived them. Few publications can claim to have documented an entire industry's modern history week by week; Tasmanian Country, across its News Corp decades and now under independent Tasmanian ownership, is one of them.