Jasmine Business Directory

News and Media in Australia covers the newspapers, broadcasters, news websites, magazines, wire services, and independent outlets that report on a country of about 27 million people spread across a continent. Distance, a federal system of government, and a small number of very large owners shape what Australians can read and watch, which gives the sector more weight than its audience size alone would suggest. This category sits within the Australia section of the directory and gathers the organisations that produce or distribute news here: metropolitan mastheads, regional and rural papers, the national public broadcasters, commercial television and radio networks, multicultural and First Nations media, and the digital-native publishers of the past two decades.

The aim of this Australian News and Media business directory is to make a fragmented field easier to use. A reader looking for a state broadcaster, a community radio station in a particular town, a trade journal, or a news service in a language other than English should be able to move from a general interest to a specific entry without wading through unrelated results. Entries are grouped by what an outlet does and where it operates, so the structure mirrors the way the Australian media market is actually organised: national against regional, public against commercial, print against broadcast against online.

Australia regulates its media through a mix of statute and self-regulation. Broadcasting falls under the Broadcasting Services Act 1992 and is overseen by the Australian Communications and Media Authority, while the print and online press operate largely under voluntary standards set by the Australian Press Council (ACMA, n.d.; Australian Press Council, n.d.). The legal split between broadcast and print is one reason a single business and web directory covering Australian news has to hold quite different kinds of organisation side by side, since a licensed television network and an online-only masthead answer to separate bodies and separate rules.

Consumption habits have shifted sharply. The Digital News Report: Australia 2025, produced by the News and Media Research Centre at the University of Canberra, found that accessing news through social media had overtaken traditional online news for the first time in the eleven years the survey had run, with Facebook the most used social platform for news at 38 percent overall and Instagram the most used among 18 to 24 year olds (Park et al., 2025). Television still reached the largest audience, but the direction of travel was clear. Where audiences go determines which outlets survive and which fold, so these changes affect every entry in a directory of Australian news outlets.

Commercial broadcasting is a large part of the field. Free-to-air television rests on three main commercial networks, Seven, Nine, and Ten, which produce national news bulletins from metropolitan studios and reach regional viewers through affiliate stations such as those run by WIN Television, Southern Cross Austereo, and Imparja (Nine Network, Wikipedia, n.d.). Commercial radio is similarly grouped under a handful of owners, including Southern Cross Austereo, the Australian Radio Network, Nine Radio, and Nova Entertainment, which between them hold most metropolitan FM licences and the main AM talk formats (Southern Cross Austereo, Wikipedia, n.d.). These networks supply a large share of the daily news that Australians hear and see, which is why a business directory of Australian news and media has to list broadcasters as prominently as it lists print and online titles.

This page also reflects the geography of the country. News in Australia is organised heavily by state and territory, with separate daily mastheads and broadcast bulletins for Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane, Perth, Adelaide, Hobart, Canberra, and Darwin, alongside hundreds of regional titles. A directory of Australian news media that ignored that structure would be of little use, so listings are arranged to let a reader find outlets serving a particular city, region, or community. The sections that follow set out the public broadcasters and regulators, the pattern of ownership and the history behind it, the disruption caused by digital platforms, and the state of regional journalism and audience trust.

Two national public broadcasters anchor the Australian news system. The Australian Broadcasting Corporation began as the Australian Broadcasting Commission on 1 July 1932, created by an Act of the federal Parliament, and was renamed a corporation in 1983 (Australian Broadcasting Corporation, n.d.). Its charter requires it to provide programs that contribute to a sense of national identity, that inform and entertain, and that reflect the cultural diversity of the country. The ABC operates national and local radio, television channels, and one of the most visited news websites in Australia, and its local radio network gives it a presence in regional centres that few commercial operators match. The ABC reaches into so many parts of the country that almost any business directory of Australian news and media will list its regional stations alongside its national services.

The Special Broadcasting Service plays a different role. SBS formally came into existence on 1 January 1978 to manage the government's ethnic radio projects, which had started in 1975 with stations 2EA in Sydney and 3EA in Melbourne, and full-time multicultural television transmission began on 24 October 1980 (Special Broadcasting Service, n.d.). Its remit is to provide multilingual and multicultural services that reflect Australia's society, and it carries news in many languages as well as English. SBS is funded partly by government and partly by advertising, a hybrid model that sets it apart from the ABC. The two broadcasters together received billions of dollars in federal funding across the most recent triennial agreement, which is why both hold a central place in any directory of Australian news organisations.

Broadcasting is regulated by the Australian Communications and Media Authority, formed on 1 July 2005 from the merger of the Australian Broadcasting Authority and the Australian Communications Authority. ACMA administers the Broadcasting Services Act 1992 along with telecommunications and radiocommunications law, issues and oversees broadcast licences, and enforces content rules and codes of practice (ACMA, n.d.). It is an independent statutory agency rather than a government department, a distinction that matters for the independence of the outlets it regulates. A web directory covering Australian broadcast news therefore lists organisations whose right to transmit depends on a licence framework that ACMA manages.

The print and online press are not licensed in the same way. They operate instead under the Australian Press Council, established in 1976, which sets Statements of Principles and handles complaints about newspapers, magazines, and a growing number of online-only publications (Australian Press Council, n.d.). Membership is voluntary, but the Council says its constituent publishers represent the large majority of print and online mastheads in the country. The system relies on outlets agreeing to publish adjudications against them, a softer mechanism than broadcast licensing. Because membership is optional, a directory of Australian news publishers can usefully note whether a given title sits within the Press Council framework, since that affiliation signals a complaints route for readers.

Regional commercial television has gone through its own consolidation, which shapes how broadcast listings look outside the capital cities. For decades regional viewers received network programming through separate affiliate companies, but the structure has tightened. The WIN brand as a standalone regional network was retired in 2021 after more than three decades, with its stations carrying Nine metropolitan branding while keeping local identifications, and Seven West Media moved in the same period to absorb the Prime Media Group that had carried Seven programming across much of regional Australia (Regional television in Australia, Wikipedia, n.d.). Indigenous-owned Imparja Television continues to serve large parts of remote central Australia. A regional outlet listed today may therefore broadcast national bulletins produced far away while keeping only a thin layer of local content, a distinction that matters when reading any entry for a country station. Several of these regional licences have also reduced or restructured their local news services in recent years, so a network logo on a regional channel no longer guarantees that genuine local reporting sits behind it.

Professional and industry bodies complete the picture. The Media, Entertainment and Arts Alliance is the union and professional organisation for Australian journalists and maintains a code of ethics that members are expected to follow (Media, Entertainment and Arts Alliance, n.d.). The Walkley Foundation, established by the alliance in 2000 and named after the Ampol founder Sir William Walkley who instituted the awards in 1956, runs the Walkley Awards, the best-known recognition of Australian journalism across print, broadcast, photographic, and online work (Walkley Foundation, n.d.). The Community Broadcasting Association of Australia represents the large community radio and television sector, which fills gaps left by commercial and public broadcasters, particularly in regional areas and among specific language and interest communities. Listings for these bodies sit alongside the outlets themselves in a business and web directory covering Australian media, because they shape the standards and recognition that working newsrooms answer to.

Australia has one of the more concentrated news markets among comparable democracies, and that concentration is worth understanding when reading any set of listings. A small number of companies control most newspaper circulation and a large share of commercial broadcasting. Across the metropolitan press, News Corp Australia titles have accounted for close to two thirds of circulation and Nine Entertainment papers for roughly a further quarter, leaving little room for independent metropolitan dailies (Mass media in Australia, Wikipedia, n.d.). Research bodies have found that the great majority of newspaper revenue flows to a handful of conglomerates, principally Nine, News Corp, Seven West Media, and Australian Community Media. A directory of Australian news media reflects this, because so many individual mastheads trace back to the same few owners.

The major groups each have a distinct footprint. News Corp Australia publishes The Australian, the country's main national broadsheet, along with metropolitan tabloids such as the Herald Sun in Melbourne and The Daily Telegraph in Sydney, and a large stable of regional titles. Nine Entertainment, after merging with the former Fairfax Media in 2018, controls The Sydney Morning Herald, The Age in Melbourne, and the Australian Financial Review, as well as the Nine television network. Seven West Media owns the Seven Network and dominates the West Australian market through The West Australian newspaper. Australian Community Media holds a wide spread of regional and rural mastheads. Anyone using a business directory of Australian newspapers benefits from knowing these relationships, since editorial resources and group ownership often sit behind titles that look independent.

This concentration is not new. The Australian press began as a government instrument rather than a free one. The Sydney Gazette and New South Wales Advertiser, the first newspaper printed in Australia, ran from 5 March 1803 as a semi-official publication authorised by Governor Philip King and printed by George Howe, a convict transported for life who had worked previously at The Times in London (The Sydney Gazette, Wikipedia, n.d.). Every issue was censored by the colonial administration, and it carried official proclamations, court news, shipping movements, and notices of pardoned convicts. The paper did not cease to be censored until 1824. A web directory tracing the lineage of Australian news outlets often reaches back to titles whose origins lie in this colonial period.

Through the nineteenth and twentieth centuries the colonial press grew into a competitive industry and then consolidated. Family dynasties such as the Fairfaxes, the Packers, and the Murdochs built large holdings, and successive waves of merger and acquisition reduced the number of independent owners. The rise of the Murdoch interests from an Adelaide base into a national and then global company is the most studied of these stories, but the wider pattern of fewer owners controlling more titles holds across the sector. For users of an Australian news business directory, this history explains why the market today offers fewer distinct editorial voices than the raw number of mastheads might suggest.

Wire services have shaped the system as much as the big proprietors. Australian Associated Press was founded in 1935 when Keith Murdoch brokered a merger of competing services into a not-for-profit cooperative owned by newspaper shareholders (Australian Associated Press, n.d.). For decades AAP supplied the shared factual backbone of Australian journalism, from court reporting to election results. In March 2020 its shareholders moved to shut it down, citing competition from free online content, but the newswire was rescued months later by a group of philanthropists and federal support and continued as a not-for-profit. So many newsrooms depend on its copy that the survival of AAP matters to almost every outlet in a directory of Australian news services. Its near-collapse also showed how fragile even core infrastructure had become as advertising moved online.

The shift of advertising to global technology platforms reshaped the economics of Australian news, and the country's policy response drew international attention. As classified and display advertising moved to Google and Facebook, the revenue that had funded newsrooms fell sharply, while the same platforms became major distributors of the journalism those newsrooms produced. This imbalance prompted a regulatory experiment that other governments have since studied closely. A business directory of Australian news publishers now includes many outlets whose finances depend directly on the outcome of that experiment.

In 2020 the Australian government asked the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission to draft a mandatory code of conduct addressing the gap in bargaining power between news businesses and the largest digital platforms. The News Media and Digital Platforms Mandatory Bargaining Code passed Parliament on 25 February 2021 and came into effect on 2 March 2021 (ACCC, n.d.). The code lets qualifying news businesses register and, if a platform is formally designated, requires that platform to give 14 days notice of algorithm changes and to enter a structured bargaining and arbitration process over payment for news that appears on its services. A web directory covering Australian news media records outlets that registered under this scheme.

The lead-up was contentious. Google threatened at one point to withdraw its search engine from Australia, then changed course and signed commercial deals with publishers. Facebook briefly switched off news sharing in Australia in February 2021 in protest before reaching agreements after the government added a mediation period to the draft law (ACCC, n.d.). The threat of designation, rather than designation itself, drove both companies to strike deals, and a large number of Australian news businesses, from the major groups down to smaller regional and digital publishers, received payments. For a time these arrangements propped up parts of the sector that a directory of Australian news outlets would otherwise have seen shrink faster.

Those arrangements proved temporary. On 29 February 2024 Meta announced it would not renew the 13 deals it had made with Australian media companies in 2021 and would shut down its dedicated Facebook News product (News Media Bargaining Code, Wikipedia, n.d.). Analysts read the decision as an effort to avoid setting a precedent that other countries might follow. Because no platform had ever been formally designated, the government had limited immediate leverage, and the lapse removed a significant income stream from many publishers. Anyone treating the entries in an Australian news business directory as financially settled should keep that reversal in mind, since the underlying funding model remained unresolved.

The government's next move was the News Bargaining Incentive, announced on 12 December 2024. Rather than relying on designation alone, the proposal would impose a charge on the Australian revenues of large platforms such as Meta, Google, and TikTok, offset by deals struck with local publishers and weighted to favour agreements with smaller and regional outlets (Treasury Ministers, 2024). Alongside it, the News Media Assistance Program set out direct support, including a Journalism Assistance Fund that provides a fixed sum for each eligible full-time journalist and relief payments that in one year reached more than a thousand journalists across regional, suburban, First Nations, and multicultural organisations (Department of Infrastructure, Transport, Regional Development, Communications and the Arts, n.d.). These interventions affect the viability of a large share of the outlets that a directory of Australian news media lists, especially the smaller and community-focused ones.

The decline of regional and local news is the most pressing structural problem in Australian media, and it bears directly on how this category should be read. The Public Interest Journalism Initiative, which runs the Australian Newsroom Mapping Project, has tracked hundreds of outlet closures since 2019, with regional areas carrying most of the loss; even allowing for new outlets that have opened, the country recorded a substantial net decline (Public Interest Journalism Initiative, n.d.). A turning point came in 2020 when News Corp shifted the bulk of its regional titles to a digital-only model and closed many printed local papers. A directory of Australian regional news outlets is therefore working against a moving target, since the map of who covers which town keeps changing.

The consequence is the spread of news deserts. In 2019 the competition regulator estimated there were around 21 areas with no local news coverage, most of them rural, and later mapping by the Public Interest Journalism Initiative identified dozens of local government areas without a local publisher, from Broken Hill in New South Wales to remote parts of Western Australia (Public Interest Journalism Initiative, n.d.). Where local reporting disappears, coverage of councils, courts, and community life thins out, and residents lean more on social media of uncertain reliability. A well-maintained business directory of Australian local news can help close that gap, by making the outlets that do still serve a given area easier to find.

Audience trust and behaviour add another dimension. The Digital News Report: Australia 2025 found that trust in news sat at about 43 percent, higher than the equivalent figure in the United States, and that people who had received news literacy training trusted news more than those who had not (Park et al., 2025). The same research noted growing interest in local news, a widening gender gap in news engagement, and rising but still cautious acceptance of artificial intelligence in news production. These findings matter for anyone consulting a directory of Australian news media, because they suggest readers increasingly need help telling established, accountable outlets from unverified sources.

Community, multicultural, and First Nations media form an important part of what this category covers. The community broadcasting sector, represented by the Community Broadcasting Association of Australia, runs hundreds of licensed radio and television services, many of them in regional towns or serving particular language groups, and Indigenous broadcasters provide news and programming for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander audiences. SBS adds multilingual news for migrant communities. A web directory that lists Australian news and media outlets is more useful when it includes these services alongside the large commercial and public players, since for many Australians they are the most relevant source of local and culturally specific information.

This category works best as a starting point rather than a verdict. The listings gathered here are arranged so a reader can move from a city, region, language, or type of outlet to a shortlist of relevant organisations, whether that means a state daily, a community station, a trade publication, or a digital-native masthead. The directory page itself does not publish news; it points toward the organisations that do, and toward the regulators and professional bodies that set the rules they work under. Readers should confirm an outlet's current ownership, coverage area, and editorial standing, and consult the official sources below, since the Australian media market continues to change quickly. Outlets that wish to be considered for inclusion can submit their details through the directory's normal listing process.

This category is maintained as part of a curated web directory, and its purpose is editorial rather than transactional. The entries listed under News and Media for Australia are selected and described to be useful to someone researching Australian journalism, from the national public broadcasters to the smallest regional title. The references that follow are drawn from regulators, public broadcasters, research centres, industry bodies, and recognised reference works, and they support the factual statements made in the sections above.

1. Australian Broadcasting Corporation. (n.d.). About the ABC and the ABC Charter. Australian Broadcasting Corporation
2. Australian Communications and Media Authority. (n.d.). Who we are and what we do. ACMA
3. Australian Competition and Consumer Commission. (n.d.). News media bargaining code. ACCC
4. Australian Associated Press. (n.d.). About AAP. Australian Associated Press
5. Australian Press Council. (n.d.). Standards and Statement of Principles. Australian Press Council
6. Department of Infrastructure, Transport, Regional Development, Communications and the Arts. (n.d.). News Media Assistance Program. Australian Government
7. Media, Entertainment and Arts Alliance. (n.d.). MEAA Journalist Code of Ethics. Media, Entertainment and Arts Alliance
8. Park, S., McGuinness, K., Fisher, C., Lee, J. Y., McCallum, K., and Nolan, D. (2025). Digital News Report: Australia 2025. News and Media Research Centre, University of Canberra
9. Public Interest Journalism Initiative. (n.d.). Australian Newsroom Mapping Project. Public Interest Journalism Initiative
10. Special Broadcasting Service. (n.d.). Our history. Special Broadcasting Service
11. Treasury Ministers. (2024). News Bargaining Incentive. Australian Government, the Treasury
12. Walkley Foundation. (n.d.). Walkley Awards for Excellence in Journalism. The Walkley Foundation