Community & Business
15 July, 2025
40 years of the Champion: Oakey’s paper today
Forty years on from its founding, The Oakey Champion is now part of a network of newspapers that cover most of the modern Toowoomba Region. But it still has a strong “boots on the ground presence” in the former Jondaryan and Rosalie Shires.
Bob Sheinberg’s death spelled the beginning of the end for owner John Schmidt’s time at The Oakey Champion.
New employee Saskia Smith switched the focus to social justice covering extensively efforts by David Totenhofer and others to connect with the town’s growing Indigenous population through the creation of a local Reconciliation Committee.
Smith, who won the inaugural Queensland Mother of the Year Award in 2003 for her foster care work with eleven children in long-term care, clearly had a heart for the town’s disadvantaged, which came across strongly in her work.
Schmidt recalls some of the foster children in Smith’s care taking on tasks at the paper, wrapping the weekly editions and sometimes delivering them.
But her work was hit and miss with some readers, with some giving feedback that they felt too much column space was being given to social justice issues.
At the time, Mr Schmidt was becoming less interested in the newspaper side of his business, which was based around printing in Pittsworth.
“I was there to make money and do a job,” he said.
Looking to offload the The Champion, Schmidt turned to owners of the The Clifton Courier and On Our Selection News (OOSN), Ted and Mim Rogers of Our News Pty Ltd who had worked in country media for decades.
After a few months of negotiations, the deal was sealed.
“Oakey was a nice fit in terms of the small papers we had with Clifton and OOSN on the western and southern sides of Toowoomba,” current owner Ted Rogers says.
Having previously managed local radio stations 4AK and 4WK, Rogers knew he needed to have people working on the ground for the new owners to be accepted in the town.
“We needed to make a few contacts so we knew who we were talking to and what was important to people in Oakey and district,” he said.
“We developed the paper on that basis.”
Rogers hired a salesperson to operate out of the Oakey office, where Rogers worked as the journalist for the first few months to familiarise himself with the town.
That man, Les Jasper, became quite well known throughout Oakey, staying almost ten years in the job.
“Les moved to join us after working at the Dalby Herald,” Ted recalls.
“He took a bit of interest in quite a few of the things that happened in town.”
Jasper, says he remembered his relationships with advertisers and readers in Oakey, many of whom he still considers friends, bonding with them through traumatic events such as the floods, PFAS and the long-running legal battle over the New Acland Mine licence.
“Ted had not long acquired the paper, when Oakey flooded (in 2011),” he remembers.
“We got on well with Council staff and Council - I remember when (ex-Region Mayor) Antonio came out to Oakey he always had the same spiel: “We love Oakey and we don’t do enough for you.”
With most of the journalists during the 2010s not living in town, it was often left to Jasper, who lived in Oakey with his wife Adele, to take photos outside of the standard Monday-Friday, 9am-5pm, working hours of the office.
“I was often getting asked to take photos for 80th birthdays and things like that,” he says.
Jasper is now retired with wife and van in Crows Nest, and can still be seen occasionally with his vintage VW at car shows across the Toowoomba Region.
OurNews has also been a pipeline for many journalists to start their career in media.
Young reporter, Andrew Backhouse, who was well known around town, went on to work for news.com.au as an Audience Editor for two years from 2023-2025.
Welsh-born Iwan Jones, who started at The Oakey Champion is working as a reporter for The Courier-Mail, where he has written several front page stories.
The well-liked Emma Alsop, who worked at The Oakey Champion from 2015-2022 now writes for agri-publication Grain Central.
Other journalists were Roseanne Scheme, Marina Jetnikoff and Chloe Cufflin.
Today, graphic designer Sophie Mortensen and journalist Max Mayer are the two on-the-ground OurNews employees in The Oakey Champion office on 2A Cherry Street.
In 2025, is there still a place for newspapers in today’s digital world? Long time correspondent Joanne Evans certainly thinks so.
“While Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and others share information at a rapid rate, I believe there is still a place for accurate, well constructed and positive print media, captured in real time,” she says.
Jasper says The Oakey Champion was, and remains, dependent on supporting its readers and advertising customers.
“We did a lot of good news stories and were gentle with our customers and community,” he says.
“I think it was Media Watch that said we should have done more bad stories on Wellcamp Airport, but we took the view that a good story is a better front page story than a bad one.
“Ted seems to know what a community is interested in and is loyal to the towns that are loyal to him and Mim.”
Mim Rogers also spent time working out of the Champion office forming valuable contacts with business and community.
Ted Rogers says for the paper to survive, it will need the readers to support the businesses who support it.
“Our readers can show their support for The Oakey Champion not only through buying the paper, but also by taking their business to our advertisers,” he said.
