Poppy Searle
Tuesday, June 30, 2026
Poppy Searle
Tuesday, June 30, 2026
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When Brunswick Voice began as a blog in the Autumn of 2021, there was no guarantee it would last for six months, let alone five years.
But last Thursday night about 80 subscribers celebrated that milestone by attending a special event at the Brunswick Mechanic’s Institute.
The event was compered by ABC journalist and local resident Daniel Ziffer who recalled that long before he was a familiar face on television screens he got his first taste of working in the media as a year 11 work experience journalist at his local newspaper in Sale, the Gippsland Times.
Ziffer also shared with the audience an anecdote from Merri-bek Councillor Helen Politis, who had to pull out of the event because her mother had passed away a few days earlier.
She described how important the local newspaper had always been for her mother, Stamata, and her generation of migrants as they familiarised themselves with a new community on the other side of the world in the 1960s.
“My mum and many migrants like her always relied on local newspapers to find jobs and to find trades to fix stuff around their homes.
“They also enjoyed local news and especially finding the specials in places like Basfoods.
“For this generation who are not computer literate the paper was a lifeline. She was always thrilled to pick up a hard copy of the Brunswick Voice and enjoyed it when I shared the online news with her.
“Local papers connect community.”
Brunswick Voice editor Mark Phillips began the paper as a blog during a 2021 Covid lockdown, after he received a flyer in his letterbox informing residents that the Merri-bek Council was planning to change its weekly rubbish bin collection.
News Corp had halted publishing 60 of its local newspapers the year before, including the Moreland Leader. Had the paper still been running it would have told the community of the potential changes. Frustrated about the lack of information and news that had been created by the Leader’s closure, Phillips thought to himself that somebody had to step in and revive local media.
“And I looked at myself in the mirror and said, actually, I should do something about that,” he said.
Phillips was unsure if there was an audience for local news but the the blog quickly grew into the permanent website that continues today and in late-2022, a quarterly print newspaper.
A few months before the launch of Brunswick Voice, panelist Charlie Gill also started The Rotunda, in North Fitzroy. He was not long out of school at the time, but half-a-decade later, The Rotunda is also still going strong.
Brunswick Voice in numbers
740
articles published since 2021
14
quarterly newspapers published
2517
weekly newspaper subscribers
The panel discussed the impact of local newspaper closures.
Claire Stuchbery, executive director of the Local & Independent News Association, said that when local newspapers shut down, community members lost the opportunity “to be able to tell their own stories and to understand the people who live around them, and the back stories of what’s important to them in their areas”.
Ben Rodgers, the executive officer of the Inner North Community Foundation, said local media was important to build stronger and more cohesive communities.
“This idea of a shared sense of identity about being able to wrestle with ideas and as a source of truth and a source of facts, I think is critical for a fabric of a community to come together and not have parallel experiences, but a shared experience of what it is to live in a place,” he said.
Several of the panelists received their start in journalism working for local papers and stressed the importance of small publications for shaping young journalists.
Ashlynne McGhee, an award-winning journalist at the ABC and former president of the Melbourne Press Club who is now Head of Editorial Innovation at The Conversation said: “people are at the heart of good journalism, and communities are at the heart of good journalism.
“Unless you work closely within a community, and you live in that community … you really don’t get those foundational skills as a journalist of learning to talk to people, learning to do a tough but fair story. It gives so many young journalists their first crack in the industry.”
The panelists expressed concern over the rise of AI.
“Where does AI get its content from in the first place?” Phillips asked.
“It’s only humans who can do those interviews, who can identify a story, who can go knock on doors. At Brunswick Voice … we won’t allow our content to be reused by AI if we can prevent it. And we also won’t use AI to generate any of our content.”
He went on to say that local journalism “is almost a counter to what we’re seeing with AI”.
The panel discussed how the community can contribute to the ongoing viability of local media, which still remains a work in progress.
“Money is important, [but] what I think is more important is the reflection of values,” said Rodgers, whose organisation continues to provide valuable financial support to Brunswick Voice.
“I’m going to resource Brunswick Voice because I think Brunswick’s an important part of the ecosystem…People in Brunswick have the capacity and the hustle and the innovation to do amazing stuff, as they always have”.
Phillips also spoke of the importance that community participation has had to what continues to be a volunteer-run paper.
“The two biggest hurdles I’ve faced are money and time,” he said.
“I’m really grateful I’ve got volunteers who write for us and people in this room who have helped distribute newspapers and things like that over the time … Brunswick Voice doesn’t belong to me, it belongs to the community and I really want to see it grow as an asset in our community.”
Audience members shared their thoughts on the contribution Brunswick Voice is making to the community.
“[Mark is doing] a really great job because he’s trying to get the essence of the community,” said Bruce McGregor, at key figure in the regeneration of the Merri Creek since the mid-1970s.
“And we really need local papers. They’re really vital.”
“[The paper] restores my faith in the health of society … [at a time] when people are scared, we’re under pressure economically and local papers are like a touchstone to the truth,” said another attendee, Genevieve Fitzgerald.
“They’re grounding.”
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