About The Weekly Times

The Weekly Times

Overview

The Weekly Times is Australia's national rural weekly newspaper, published in Melbourne, Victoria, by News Corp Australia. Known far and wide as the "Bible of the Bush", it is Australia's oldest rural newspaper and its most widely read, serving farmers, graziers, and rural businesses across the country. First published on 11 September 1869, it celebrated 150 years of continuous publication in 2019 and its 155th anniversary in 2024. Its editor is James Wagstaff. Its official website is weeklytimesnow.com.au (listed on Wikipedia; the website field is left empty here as it was not load-verified for this draft).

The paper covers agriculture, agribusiness, rural politics, commodity markets, weather, and country life, alongside the characters and personalities that make the Australian bush unique. It has reported on drought and bushfires, bumper crops and the relief of rain, across three centuries of rural Australian life.

History

The Weekly Times was first published on 11 September 1869 by a group of Melbourne businessmen who owned the now-defunct Daily Telegraph, with the stated aim of producing a "journal of literature, sport, agriculture, science and politics". The first edition ran to 16 pages and included news items, advertisements, sketches, poems, agricultural information, and ladies' columns, carrying the motto "The Liberal Reviseth Liberal Things". In 1892 it was acquired by the Herald newspaper group, which has published it ever since — through the Herald and Weekly Times company, News Limited's 1987 takeover of HWT, and into the modern News Corp Australia.

The paper's longevity is remarkable in Australian newspaper history. It has published continuously since 1869, weathering the decline of rural populations, the mechanisation of farming, the consolidation of media ownership, and the digital disruption that closed many country papers. Its 150th birthday in 2019 was marked with a special edition featuring a 20-page wrap and a reproduction of the original 1869 edition with explanations of the original stories, and a 30-minute documentary, Memories & Milestones: 150 Years of The Weekly Times, which premiered on Foxtel's History Channel. Editor Ed Gannon noted at the time that the paper was first published in the same year as Tolstoy's War and Peace, with a life spanning three separate centuries.

In May 2019 the paper launched AgJournal, a 40-page magazine aimed at the $60 billion agriculture and food-fibre industry, which is inserted across News Corp publications with a print run of over 500,000 copies. The paper also runs the Coles Farmer of the Year awards and, with Harvey Norman, the Shine awards celebrating rural women — initiatives that extend the brand beyond the printed page.

The Weekly Times' early decades coincided with the transformation of colonial agriculture. Selection acts opened the land to small farmers, the railways pushed into the wheat districts, and refrigeration made the export of meat and dairy possible — and the paper reported each development to readers who lived by them. Its agricultural columns carried advice on crops, stock, and machinery; its markets pages tracked the prices on which farm incomes depended; and its political coverage followed the battles over land tenure, tariffs, and rural representation. Through the Federation drought, the two world wars, the soldier-settler schemes, and the wool booms and busts, the paper was the bush's noticeboard and debating chamber. Its nickname, the Bible of the Bush, was earned across generations of Wednesday mornings on farmhouse kitchen tables.

Programming and Content

The Weekly Times covers the business and life of rural Australia: commodity prices and market reports, weather and seasonal outlooks, farm management and agribusiness, rural politics and policy, water, land management, and biosecurity. Its news pages report on drought, flood, fire, and the policy decisions in Canberra and the state capitals that affect the bush. Feature writing profiles the characters of rural Australia — farmers, shearers, stock agents, country publicans — and the paper's photography has long celebrated the landscapes and working life of the regions.

AgJournal, the monthly magazine launched in 2019, provides in-depth coverage of the agriculture and food-fibre industries. The paper's awards programmes — Farmer of the Year with Coles and the Shine awards with Harvey Norman — recognise excellence and innovation in farming and the contributions of rural women. Opinion pages carry commentary on rural policy, and the paper campaigns on issues affecting its readers, from telecommunications in the bush to transport costs and market access.

Coverage and Audience

The Weekly Times' footprint covers Victoria, New South Wales south of the Murrumbidgee, south-east South Australia, and Tasmania — the heartland of Australian broadacre farming, dairying, horticulture, and grazing. Its print readership was reported at 126,000 with a total reach of 699,000 at the time of its 150th anniversary; more recent Roy Morgan data cited by Mediaweek lists its audience at 300,000.

The paper's readers are the people who work the land and live in regional and rural Australia: farmers and graziers, farm managers and workers, stock agents, agronomists, rural contractors, and the business owners of country towns. The paper describes itself as having successfully adapted to the digital era by becoming a dependable and trusted digital companion for those readers — running a 24/7 online operation alongside the weekly print edition, with podcasts and digital products complementing the paper.

That trust was built over a century and a half of shared experience. The Weekly Times has been there for the good seasons and the bad: the record harvests and the failed ones, the opening of new irrigation districts and the towns that withered when the mines closed. Its correspondents know the difference between the Mallee and the Western District, between merinos and prime lambs, between a header and a windrower — and its readers know it. In an era when rural Australia's voice in the national media has grown fainter, the paper remains the one publication that speaks the bush's language as its first language.

Ownership

The Weekly Times is owned by News Corp Australia, published through the Herald and Weekly Times group. Its ownership lineage runs from the Daily Telegraph Newspaper Company (1869) through the Herald group (from 1892), the Herald and Weekly Times company, News Limited's 1987 acquisition, and the modern News Corp Australia. It is the rural flagship of News Corp's Australian newspaper stable, sitting alongside metropolitan dailies such as the Herald Sun, The Daily Telegraph, and The Courier-Mail.

Within News Corp's strategy for regional and rural Australia — which has shifted toward digital, with new online-only titles launched as print community papers were sold — The Weekly Times remains the company's premier rural print brand, its longevity and reader loyalty making it an institution rather than merely a masthead.

Digital Presence

The paper's website, weeklytimesnow.com.au, operates around the clock with breaking rural news, market data, weather, and the full content of the print edition for subscribers. The digital operation includes podcasts and the AgJournal magazine's online presence, and the paper is active on social media, where its farming news, award programmes, and rural photography reach audiences beyond the print circulation area.

The 150th-anniversary documentary Memories & Milestones, broadcast on Foxtel's History Channel, brought the paper's archive to television audiences, drawing on 150 years of reporting. The paper's historical editions are held by the National Library of Australia and state collections, and the Victorian Collections network holds reprints of the first 1869 edition — a 16-page window into the colonial bush, complete with its motto, its sketches, and its agricultural advice.