Welcome to CNAV

The Community Newspaper Association of Victoria (CNAV) is the peak body representing not-for-profit community newspapers across Victoria.

CNAV works actively with its members to enhance the capacity and standing of community newspapers, to enable them to fully realise their vital role in communities.

NEWS

2025 CNAV Conference

2025 CNAV Conference

Award results list 2025

 

Best feature story

Finalists

Tallangatta Herald

Warrandyte Diary

Ferntree Gully News

Winner

Gisborne Gazette

 

Best editorial comment

Finalists

Ferntree Gully News

Ballarat East Community Newsletter

Manningham and Nillumbik Bulletin

The Wombat Post

Chewton Chat

Winners

North and West Melbourne News

Tallangatta Herald

 

Best history story

Finalists

HillsNews

Warrandyte Diary

Winner

Village Bell

 

Best photograph

Finalists

Warrandyte Diary

Tallangatta Herald

Winner

Lorne Independent

 

Best sports reporting

Finalists

Warrandyte Diary

Manningham & Nillumbik Bulletin

Winner

Connecting Sebastopol Community News

 

Best writing by a person 18 years or younger

Finalists

Prom Coast News

Churchill & District News

Winner

Boronia & The Basin Community News

 

 

Best community content

Finalists

Gisborne Gazette

Ferntree Gully News

Winner

Village Bell

 

Best design & layout

Finalists

Warrandyte Diary

North & West Melbourne News

Winner

The Westsider

 

Best newspaper

Winner

Gisborne Gazette

North and West Melbourne News

SpringDale Messenger

Waranga News

Yackity Yak

See more details and photographs on the Conferences page

 

2023 Conference

Saturday 21 October 2023

CNAV’s 2023 conference venue will be Mercure Hotel North Melbourne.

For more information and for award nominations and booking, see the Conference page

Archived news items are available here.

NOTICES

Legal Deposit

Legal deposit what is it?   

If you publish a work in Victoria – that is, make material available to the public for sale, to registered members or free of charge – you are required to send one copy to the Library within 60 days of publication.

Legal deposit, which has its origins in the Copyright Act 1869, has helped to preserve and maintain a lasting record of Victoria’s publishing history. It has also enabled the The State Library of Victoria to collect Victorian publications not held in other libraries, providing valuable material for researchers. The National Library of Australia also wants to receive copies of community paper publications.

See detailed information here https://www.slv.vic.gov.au/help/copyright-legal-deposit/legal-deposit. Contact SLV if you need any more information.

Recently CNAV received correspondence from the State Library of Victoria. Apparently a number of community papers have got behind in submitting their papers to the library. The pandemic may have been a major reason why papers overlooked sending their papers in. Some papers may have  changed their editors or support staff and forgot to tell them about legal deposit. Some of our newer members may not have started submitting their papers yet.

As major libraries are digitising their resources, it is easier for papers to email their issues as digital copy. It can now be done through a single online service – National edeposit (NED) at https://www.ned.gov.au/ned/

Managing government advertising

The Victorian State Government has recently appointed OmniMedia as their advertising agent. OmniMedia have asked the committee to let our members know that they are keen to work with community newspapers, but they have had some difficulty managing the timelines that some volunteer run papers work to. Here are a few steps that will facilitate the government advertising process.

  • Always keep your deadlines and advertising rates up to date at our broker portal cnav.in
  • When Bill Penrose from PAS sends you a booking order, please respond to it, either affirmatively or negatively.
  • Once the ad is available, if you are uncomfortable printing it, please let Bill know immediately that you won’t be running it.
  • Once the advertisement has been published, please make sure you get your invoice to PAS/Bill Penrose within 2 weeks. We appreciate that some papers invoice less frequently than others, but it is certainly possible to issue a single invoice to meet the government advertising timelines rather than waiting to send out a whole batch. Lack of prompt invoicing is a major headache for OmniMedia as they need to report back to government on placement of ads and costs within a tight timeline.
  • Always send a tear sheet with your invoice. Once upon a time, a tear sheet was the page of the news- paper on which the ad was placed torn out and posted with the hard copy invoice. If you invoice electronically, please send a pdf or jpg of the page. If you aren’t comfortable with converting the file, just take a photo of the page on your phone and send that through. At the very least, send a torn- out page of your newspaper by post and make a note of this on the email your invoice is attached to.
  • To make sure your invoice is found and processed in time, make sure your email header starts with ‘CNAV’ and your paper name.
  • Make sure your order number is included in your invoice.

Electoral advertisements

All electoral advertisements (not just at election time) at Federal, State and Local government levels must include the name and address of the person who authorised the advertisement.  The address must be a full street address and suburb or locality.

Note:      See sub-section 328 (1) of the Commonwealth Electoral Act 1918 and sub-section 83(1) of the Victorian Electoral Act 2002).  Under sub-section 328(5) of the Commonwealth Act, the address of a person means an address, including a full street address and suburb or locality, at which the person can usually be contacted during the day. It does not include a post office box.  Under section 3 of the Victorian Act, address does not include a post-office box.

Useful Links

Our Community

Our Community is Australia’s Centre for Excellence for the nation’s 600,000 not-for-profits & schools, providing advice, tools, resources and training.   https://www.ourcommunity.com.au/

The Citizen

The Citizen is an online publication of the Centre for Advancing Journalism