About The Young Witness

The Young Witness

Overview

The Young Witness is the paid weekly newspaper for Young and the surrounding Hilltops district on the South West Slopes of New South Wales. Young, a town of 10,610 people at the 2021 census and the largest centre in the Hilltops Council area of 19,254 people, is marketed as the Cherry Capital of Australia and hosts the National Cherry Festival each December. The Witness has reported the district since it was first published in 1909, through several changes of name and the absorption of its historic rivals, and it is still published under The Young Witness name today. Since May 2023 it has been published by Regional Media Corp, the independent regional publishing group formed by the Higgins family's Provincial Press Group, after more than a century in which the district's papers passed through local ownership and, in the Witness's later decades, the Fairfax and Australian Community Media networks. It remains in current publication: the Australian Press Council's September 2026 register lists The Young Witness among Country Press Australia member publications in New South Wales, and news monitoring recorded original Young reporting from the paper in August and September 2026.

History

The Young Witness was first published in 1909, in a town whose newspaper history reached back to the Lambing Flat gold rush — the settlement that became Young, renamed in 1863 for the New South Wales governor Sir John Young. Young's first enduring paper, the Burrangong Argus, had been published since 1865, in its later years under the Bennett family; the proprietor's son Benjamin Bennett managed and edited the Argus before his election to federal parliament in 1912. When the Argus ceased publication in February 1913, the Witness acquired its assets. In 1923 the paper's title changed to the Daily Witness, reflecting daily publication, but in 1931 it reverted to the Young Witness name. In 1947 it absorbed its long-standing rival The Young Chronicle. A further change came in 1961, when the title became the South West News Pictorial, a name it carried for more than three decades. In 1993 the paper was merged with The Young Times and the combined publication took back the name The Young Witness, under which it has been published ever since. Issues of the paper from its early decades have been digitised by the National Library of Australia as part of the Australian Newspapers Digitisation Program and are available through Trove.

In the early twenty-first century the Witness was one of the paid weekly mastheads of Australian Community Media, the regional arm that had passed from Rural Press through Fairfax Media. That chapter ended in March 2023, when ACM agreed to sell seven of its New South Wales paid weeklies — the Parkes Champion-Post, Forbes Advocate, Canowindra News, The Grenfell Record, Cowra Guardian, Boorowa News and the Young Witness — to Provincial Press Group. ACM's managing director Tony Kendall said the company had not been actively looking to sell, but considered the transaction in the titles' best interest. The sale was completed in early May 2023, with the seven papers published through the new entity Regional Media Corp.

Programming and Content

The Witness covers the full round of a rural district's life: Hilltops Council affairs, community and school news, agriculture, sport and the events that structure the year in Young, from the National Cherry Festival — which celebrated its 75th edition in December 2025, adding a multicultural fiesta on Boorowa Street supported by New South Wales government festival funding — to the commemorations of the town's service history. Its local reporting continues in that tradition: in August 2026 the paper reported Young's marking of the 60th anniversary of the Battle of Long Tan, with the commemorative service hosted by the Young Sub Branch of the Returned and Services League on Vietnam Veterans' Day, 18 August. District sport is a staple, including the South West Slopes Cricket League, whose junior and senior results across Young, Boorowa, Harden and Cootamundra the paper publishes. Journalist Rebecca Hewson has reported for the Witness across both Young and its sister title The Grenfell Record, and Craig Thomson is a former editor of the paper. Alongside its own district reporting, the website carries regional and national material shared across its publishing network.

Audience and Reach

The paper's readers are the people of Young and the Hilltops district: a town population of about 10,600 within a council area of about 19,300, set in a farming district built first on gold and then on wool, grain and stone fruit. Young is marketed as the Cherry Capital of Australia — the nation's first commercial cherry orchard was planted in the district in 1878 — and cherry growing remains central to the local economy and identity, drawing seasonal workers and visitors each summer. The Witness has been the district's paper of record through that whole modern history, and as a paid weekly it depends on subscribers and local advertisers across Young and the surrounding villages of the South West Slopes, in a market where it is the established local masthead.

Digital Presence

The paper publishes online at youngwitness.com.au, with news, sport and community content updated between print editions, and maintains a social presence including the @theyoungwitness account on X. One legacy of its ownership history is visible online: when the Public Interest Journalism Initiative reviewed the seven sold titles in August 2023, it recorded that, despite the change of operator, their websites still ran on ACM's web platform, carried syndicated content from ACM titles and were badged with the Australian Community Media logo in the site footer. News monitoring services continue to record the site's output: items sourced to the Young Witness in August and September 2026 included both the paper's own Young reporting and regional features shared within its group.

Ownership and Organisation

The Young Witness is published by Regional Media Corp Pty Ltd — recorded by the Public Interest Journalism Initiative as trading as Midwest Media — the entity formed to publish the seven former ACM titles. Regional Media Corp joins the Higgins family's Provincial Press Group, whose North East Media division is based in Wangaratta, Victoria, and whose newspaper interests date to W. T. Higgins's purchase of the Wangaratta Despatch in 1921, with Narromine Star owners Lucie Peart and Tim Pankhurst. The acquisition took Provincial Press Group's holdings well beyond its existing sixteen North East Media titles, which include the tri-weekly Wangaratta Chronicle, and followed its 2022 purchases of the Cooma Snowy Monaro Post and the Jindabyne Summit Sun in the Snowy Mountains. Edward Higgins is chief executive of Regional Media Corp and Hartley Higgins managing director of Provincial Press Group; on completing the purchase, Edward Higgins said the company was pleased to be the future custodian of the regions' long-standing newspapers and aimed to deliver a local print and digital media service for each community. The title's publisher holds membership of Country Press Australia, under which The Young Witness appears in the Australian Press Council's register of member mastheads for September 2026.

Contact and Availability

The Young Witness is published weekly in print as a paid newspaper for the Young district and continuously online at youngwitness.com.au, where subscription and contact details for the paper are provided. Its office in Young has been photographed on Boorowa Street, the town's main street, and the paper can also be followed through its social media accounts, including @theyoungwitness on X.