A couple of years in the making, Red Centre weekly The Centralian Today made its first appearance this weekend.
Star News managing director Paul Thomas said there had been an “incredible reaction” to the first issue.
“The local community has been keen for someone to launch a paper,” he says. “They have held community forums, and one local businessperson also funded an advisor to research options and build a business case for a paper.”
And far from shutting in favour of remote production from Melbourne – as had been suggested in a report to GXpress – it’s News Corp Australia’s Adelaide print centre that is printing the newcomer.
Reports circulating last week that the Mile End print centre – the first of News’ colour offset printing plants to open in Australia – might be closing in favour of its new print centre in Truganina, Melbourne, have been emphatically denied with a reminder that a $4 million upgrade there has just been completed.
The project included relocating a press from ACM’s (and Fairfax Media’s) former print centre in North Richmond, NSW, itself a ‘relocate’ from The Age in Melbourne.
Adelaide, where Rupert Murdoch’s business career began when he inherited The News from his father, is home to The Advertiser, one of News Corp’s group of Australian metro dailies.
News closed its own Alice Springs paper, the Centralian Advocate in 2020. For the previous eight years it had been printed at News' plant in Darwin and trucked the 1500 kilometres to the city after production in Alice ceased.