Farewell CBD News – but not goodbye

After 12 years and 133 editions, CBD News signs off not with a goodbye, but a new beginning, as it consolidates with its sibling Hyperlocal mastheads under a new citywide publication, The Melburnian.

When CBD News first landed in letterboxes back in 2014, Melbourne’s CBD was already changing fast.

There were more residents, more students, more workers, more cranes, more arguments about planning, more small businesses taking risks, and more people beginning to realise that postcode 3000 was not just a commercial centre, but a genuine local community.

Twelve years and 133 editions later, this masthead has told thousands of those stories.

And now, with this final edition of CBD News, it is time to say farewell.

Not goodbye, thankfully. Just farewell to this particular name, this particular chapter, and this particular monthly ritual of producing five separate local newspapers for different parts of the same great city.

From September, CBD News will be reborn as part of The Melburnian – a new consolidated monthly print publication bringing together CBD News and its four sibling mastheads: Docklands News, Southbank News, Inner City News and North West City News.

The aim is simple: the same local focus, the same commitment to print, the same hyperlocal journalism, but with a broader lens across the entire City of Melbourne.

CBD readers will still have access to a local print publication. It will still be delivered throughout the city. It will still cover the issues, people, businesses, culture, planning debates, council decisions and odd little Melbourne moments that make this place what it is.

But The Melburnian will also give readers more. More stories from Southbank, Docklands, Carlton, Parkville, East Melbourne, North Melbourne, West Melbourne, Kensington and surrounds. More context. More connections between communities that, in truth, have always had more in common than the mastheads on the front page sometimes suggested.

On a personal note, I have loved every minute of this journey. Well, almost every minute. There were probably a few press nights, printer deadlines and distribution dramas I could have done without.

However running five separate local news services has, quite simply, run its course.

By bringing everything together under The Melburnian, we want to build on the wonderful foundations laid over the past 25 years, since this business first began publishing in Docklands. We want to create a stronger print product, lean more heavily into digital growth, and make local journalism more sustainable and more impactful for many years to come.

With The Melburnian, we have also tried to build something that feels unmistakably of this city.

Its design has been inspired by Melbourne itself – from motifs in the new masthead that nod to icons such as Her Majesty’s Theatre, the State Library, Parliament House and Fed Square, to a layout system underpinned by the tram network that connects our suburbs.

Each suburb will have its own location marker and tram line identity, helping guide readers through the paper in the same way Melburnians move through the city. It is a design idea, but also an editorial one.

Because while The Melburnian brings our five mastheads together, it is not about losing the hyperlocal edge that made them matter. It is about connecting those local stories more clearly – from Docklands to Southbank, Carlton to Kensington, the CBD to North Melbourne – and showing how each community forms part of the same living, moving city.

As a relatively new dad, I am also looking forward to what this next chapter might mean personally. Producing five newspapers each month has been a privilege, but it has also been a lot. Like many working parents, I am learning that time is both precious and wildly unforgiving.

That is part of the reason this change matters. It is not about stepping back from local news. It is about making sure we can keep doing it properly.

Because as publisher and editor, and as someone born and raised here in Melbourne, I care too deeply about this city’s local journalism to let it fade away through fatigue, fragmentation or nostalgia.

All good things need to evolve. And CBD News has reached that point.

When my predecessor, the late Shane Scanlan, and his then business partner Shine Dighe launched this paper, Shane wrote about John Pascoe Fawkner’s words from 1838: “A very small degree of support, timely afforded, will establish a newspaper here.”

That sentiment still rings true.

This paper was born from a belief that the CBD deserved its own voice. Not a citywide gloss, not a passing mention in a metropolitan daily, but a dedicated local newspaper interested in the detail of this place.

Over the years, CBD News has covered the Queen Victoria Market renewal, homelessness and drug dependence, the politics of Town Hall under Lord Mayors Doyle, Capp and Reece, the pandemic years when the city was on its knees and the long road to recovery, the construction and opening of the Metro Tunnel, and countless stories of the people, businesses, events and ideas that have shaped Melbourne.

There are too many people to thank properly, but I will try.

Thank you to our readers, who picked us up, wrote to us, corrected us, encouraged us and occasionally gave us a very direct piece of their mind.

Thank you to our advertisers, whose support made this work possible.

Thank you to the City of Melbourne, community groups, traders, residents, artists, advocates and contributors who trusted us with their stories.

And thank you to my team, past and present – Lauren, Kate, Jenny, Chris, Hanna, and our amazing distributors who have canvassed every corner of this city to make sure the paper gets where it needs to go.

CBD News has been a privilege. The Melburnian is the next step.

So, thank you for 12 wonderful years.

See you next month.