Readers with good memories might recall Mediaweek celebrating 150 years of The Weekly Times back in 2019.
Then editor Ed Gannon said The Weekly Times’ longevity was due to its ability to adapt and find new ways to put readers and their communities first.
He also had some impressive facts. “This is a 150-year-old institution first published the same year as War and Peace with a life spanning three separate centuries.”
See also: The Weekly Times milestone: 150 years of continuous publication
We updated The Weekly Times story as recently as February this year. Tess Connery wrote about News Corp Australia’s rural and regional masthead, now under editor James Wagstaff, presenting its 12th Farmer of the Year awards.
See also: The Weekly Times’ Farmer of the Year Awards: Reaching regional audiences
On this outing, we are celebrating 155 years of The Weekly Times. A milestone worthy of recognition especially as the brand continues to thrive in print as well as digitally.
Wagstaff has been editor for three years. “I’ve been with the newspaper for 20,” he told Mediaweek. “I grew up on a farm in Western New South Wales.”
It’s a very different business model now from when he joined in the mid-2000s.
“Back then we had a weekly website that had the first four paragraphs of the front page. We now run 24/7 online and have a range of products including a podcast.”
The editorial team at The Weekly Times also produced Ag Journal which gets inserted in every News Corp publication. The print run is over 500,000 copies.
There is also the Coles Farmer of the Year Awards and the Harvey Norman Shine Awards.
The Roy Morgan Readership data lists The Weekly Times with an audience of 300,000.
For those readers to access the content they either read the paper or have a digital subscription. The footprint where most of those readers live covers Victoria, New South Wales south of the Murrumbidgee, southeast South Australia and Tasmania.
“Digitally, we’ve really got a national focus. There’s quite strong support in New South Wales, Queensland, South Australia, and Western Australia,” said Wagstaff.
“That national audience is what we use to leverage the Farmer of the Year and Shine Awards.”
In his 20 years with the brand, Wagstaff has seen many stories repeat themselves, but also others which have developed more recently.
“I don’t know how many droughts or floods I’ve been through in the last 20 years. The uptake of technology has been a huge game changer for the agriculture industry. There are some farms running a tractor worth a million dollars that really drives itself.”
Wagstaff explained some recent good farming seasons saw farmers investing in their businesses. “We’ve tapped into that market with people wanting to know what to spend money on to make money.
“We’ve really seen the big get bigger. In recent years, the amount of money that’s come into corporate agriculture from overseas investors has been amazing.”
Although Wagstaff is based in Melbourne at HWT HQ, he tries to get back to the land as much as possible. “All my family’s in the country, all friend networks are in the country too.”
Print product remains core to The Weekly Times
The bond between the brand and readers is strong. “I’ve been to funerals where people have been buried with a copy of The Weekly Times,” said Wagstaff.
“There’s a lot of loyalty and almost a sense of community ownership over the title.
“Readers praise us generally about what we do. But they’ll quickly give us a clip on the ear if they think we’ve let them down.
“They say The Weekly Times is not just a source of information, but a champion of the issues that are relevant to rural and regional Australia.”