About The Geelong News

The Geelong News

The Geelong News is a free weekly newspaper delivered to households across the Geelong region in Victoria. Published on Wednesdays, it is part of the Geelong Advertiser group — owned by News Corp Australia — and serves as the group's free community title alongside the paid daily Geelong Advertiser. Its focus is local community issues and sport, with zoned editions producing different content for different parts of Geelong.

Overview

The Geelong News is a free weekly paper delivered to houses across the Geelong region. Published on Wednesdays, it has historically circulated more than 70,000 copies per week (a historical figure; current circulation is not publicly confirmed), making it one of the highest-circulating free weeklies in regional Victoria. Its editorial focus is local community issues and sport — the suburban news that matters to Geelong households: council decisions, community campaigns, school achievements, local clubs, and the football and netball results of the region's leagues.

The paper operates without a standalone website; its digital presence sits within the Geelong Advertiser's online platform at geelongadvertiser.com.au, the News Corp regional site for Victoria's second city. The Geelong News has no independent official domain, so this profile lists no standalone website — its news is published through the Advertiser's digital channels.

The Geelong News is one of several free titles in the Geelong market, competing with the Times News Group's Geelong Times and Star News Group's Geelong Independent for the free-weekly readership of Victoria's second city. Its competitive advantage is its integration with the Advertiser group: the daily's newsroom, its reporters and photographers, and its commercial operation all feed the weekly, giving the News a depth of local journalism that standalone free papers struggle to match. The paper's zoned editions — different content for different parts of Geelong — are a direct inheritance from Horniblow's original model, which began with separate editions for Newtown and Geelong West in 1968 and grew into the city-wide zoned coverage of today.

History

The Geelong News was first published as the Belmont and Highton News on 21 July 1965. Its founder and publisher was Dick Horniblow, then 27 years old — a young newspaperman who had completed a Diploma of Agriculture before working for three years at the Weekly Times, The Sun, and The Herald in Melbourne, then for Australian Associated Press in Melbourne, then with the Gippsland Times in Sale, and finally as editor of the Traralgon Journal. Horniblow's country-paper apprenticeship — from the Weekly Times to the Gippsland Times to the Traralgon Journal — gave him the model he would apply in Geelong: a free suburban weekly, delivered to every household, funded by local advertising.

The first edition of the Belmont and Highton News was delivered to 4,000 local households. The first issues were produced by Horniblow and his wife Helen from their home in Hawthorn Avenue, Belmont — a true kitchen-table startup. In April 1966, the newspaper moved to an office in High Street, Belmont, and circulation expanded to cover the adjoining suburb of Grovedale.

The paper's growth was rapid. In September 1968, the name changed to the Geelong Suburban News, when separate editions were launched for the suburbs of Newtown and Geelong West. By 1970, the newspaper covered the entire Geelong area. In 1973, Horniblow, his brother Bryan Horniblow, and a business partner purchased the Ballarat News, extending the group's footprint. In 1975, the Geelong News moved from High Street to Victoria House in Moorabool Street, by which time 25 permanent staff were employed by the group. West Web printers was added to the Geelong News group in 1976, giving the group its own printing capacity.

In 1980, the group was acquired by the Geelong Advertiser group — then a subsidiary of The Herald and Weekly Times Ltd. The acquisition brought the free weekly under the same ownership as Geelong's daily paper, the Geelong Advertiser, which had been Victoria's dominant regional daily since 1840. News Corp acquired the Geelong Advertiser in 1987, and the Geelong News has remained part of the News Corp regional stable ever since — the group's free community weekly for Victoria's second city.

In recent years, the newspaper began producing different content for different parts of Geelong — zoned editions tailoring suburban news to the city's distinct districts, from the northern suburbs to the Bellarine-facing east and the southern growth corridors.

Content

The Geelong News focuses on local community issues and sport. Its content spans:

• Community news: the suburban issues that dominate Geelong households — council decisions, planning disputes, neighbourhood campaigns, community safety, local services, and the achievements of the city's schools, clubs, and volunteer groups.
• Sport: the region's sporting life — local football and netball leagues, cricket, basketball, and junior sport — with the community-club coverage that is the staple of the free weekly, alongside the city's elite sporting identity, the Geelong Cats.
• Zoned editions: different content for different parts of Geelong — the paper's editions are tailored to the city's districts, so that the news in the Belmont and Highton edition differs from the news in the Newtown and Geelong West editions, reflecting the hyper-local model the paper pioneered in the 1960s.
• Community service: the free weekly's traditional role — public notices, community events, charity appeals, and the celebrations and milestones of Geelong's suburbs.

Coverage & Audience

The Geelong News is delivered free to households across the Geelong region, published on Wednesdays. Its historical circulation exceeded 70,000 copies per week, distributed across the city's suburbs — from the inner city to Belmont, Highton, Grovedale, Newtown, Geelong West, and the growth corridors. (This is a historical figure; current circulation is not publicly confirmed.)

Its audience is Geelong households — the families, workers, and retirees of Victoria's second city — who receive the paper free and read it for the suburban community news and sporting coverage that complements the Geelong Advertiser's daily journalism.

Ownership

The Geelong News is part of the Geelong Advertiser group, owned by News Corp Australia. The Geelong Advertiser — first published on 21 November 1840 — is the oldest newspaper title in Victoria and the second-oldest in Australia, founded by James Harrison, the Scottish emigrant who also pioneered refrigeration. News Corp acquired the Advertiser in 1987, and the group has operated the Geelong News as its free weekly community title since the 1980 acquisition of Horniblow's group. The Horniblow story — from a 27-year-old's kitchen table in Hawthorn Avenue, Belmont, to a group of 25 permanent staff with its own printing press, acquired by the city's daily — is one of the great small-business success stories of Australian regional media, and a reminder that the free-weekly model the News still practises was pioneered by independents, not corporates.

The Geelong Advertiser group sits within News Corp Australia's regional network, alongside the Herald Sun in Melbourne and the group's other Victorian regional titles. The Geelong News benefits from the group's newsroom, printing, and commercial infrastructure while maintaining its distinct identity as the free suburban weekly.

Digital Presence

The Geelong News has no standalone official website; its digital presence is integrated into the Geelong Advertiser's online platform at geelongadvertiser.com.au, where the group's Geelong journalism — including the free weekly's community content — is published. Readers access the Geelong News's stories through the Advertiser's site and its social media channels, which serve the combined audience of the daily and the weekly.

The absence of a standalone domain reflects the paper's role within the group: the Geelong News is the Advertiser's free print weekly, and its digital life runs through the Advertiser's established online brand. For profile purposes, no standalone website is listed — the attributed digital home is geelongadvertiser.com.au, the Geelong Advertiser's official site.

For Geelong, the News remains what Dick Horniblow founded in 1965: the free weekly in the letterbox — the paper of the suburbs, covering the community issues and the sporting life of Victoria's second city, every Wednesday, from the Belmont and Highton News's 4,000 households to the tens of thousands it reaches today.