How to Read The Canberra Times and Newcastle Herald Without a Subscription
The Canberra Times and Newcastle Herald are metered and, unlike the News Corp and Nine papers, load in full through a reader. Here is how their paywalls work.
Paywall behaviour last tested
Australian newspapers are among the hardest in the English-speaking world to read without paying, and the two biggest groups, News Corp and Nine, block reader tools entirely. The third group, Australian Community Media, is different. Its flagship, The Canberra Times, and its regional dailies such as the Newcastle Herald meter their sites in a way that a reader can retrieve. This guide explains how the ACM paywall works, how to read a Canberra Times or Newcastle Herald story in full, and which Australian papers do not work at all.
How the Canberra Times paywall works
The Canberra Times runs a metered paywall. Non-subscribers get a limited number of free articles a month, counted by a cookie, before the story is replaced by a subscription prompt. Some breaking news and public-safety coverage is left outside the meter. The exact allowance is not published and changes from time to time.
The same system runs across Australian Community Media's titles, which include the Newcastle Herald, the Illawarra Mercury, The Examiner in Launceston, The Border Mail and dozens of smaller regional papers. In each case the complete article is delivered in the page HTML so that Google can index it, and a script in the browser applies the meter. A crawler-style reader that never runs the script receives the full story.
In our test on 28 September 2026, a 2,736-word Canberra Times education story about a school's approach to children with disabilities loaded in full through Skip the Paywall, all 106 paragraphs. A 572-word Newcastle Herald business story about a data centre seeking renewable-energy partners also loaded in full, all 37 paragraphs.
Read an article in full
- Copy the article link. ACM links look like canberratimes.com.au/story/8953315/headline-slug/ or newcastleherald.com.au/story/9327354/headline-slug/.
- Paste it into the box on the home page and press Read Article.
- The story appears in a clean reader view with the headline, byline and full text.
Because the regional titles share the platform, a link from any ACM paper should behave the same way as the two we tested.
Australian papers that do not work
We want to be plain about this, because it is the question we are asked most from Australia.
- News Corp Australia titles, including The Australian, the Herald Sun, The Daily Telegraph and The Courier-Mail, block the reader in every test. Their servers refuse automated requests, so no article page is ever returned.
- Nine's mastheads, The Sydney Morning Herald, The Age and The Australian Financial Review, also block the reader in every test.
There is no reader tool that opens these, whatever it claims. Our guide to sites that cannot be bypassed covers the legitimate routes, and the same library options below apply.
Other approaches
- Library access. Most Australian public libraries provide PressReader, which carries The Canberra Times, the ACM regionals and, importantly, the News Corp and Nine papers that the reader cannot open. It is free with a library card and is the best option for the papers that do not work.
- Private windows. The ACM meter is cookie-based and resets in a private window, though the allowance is small.
- The ABC. For national news, the ABC is free and covers most of what the papers do.
- Newsletters. The Canberra Times sends free daily briefings with links to the main stories.
How it compares with papers elsewhere
The ACM titles behave like the metered papers we cover in other countries, such as The Globe and Mail in Canada and The Times in Britain. News Corp and Nine behave like the sites that block automated access outright. Our explainer on metered versus hard paywalls sets out the difference.
Support local news in Australia
Regional papers in Australia have closed by the dozen in the past decade, and ACM's subscriptions fund the reporters who remain in places like Newcastle, Wollongong and Launceston. If one of these is your local paper, an introductory subscription is usually a few dollars a week and the right way to keep it going.
Try it with an article
Paste the URL of an article from The Canberra Times and read it in a clean reader view. Free, instant, no signup.
Frequently asked questions
How many free articles does The Canberra Times allow?
The paper does not publish the number and changes it periodically. Most non-subscribers see the subscription prompt after a handful of articles in a month.
Does Skip the Paywall work on The Australian or the Sydney Morning Herald?
No. News Corp Australia and Nine titles block automated requests, so the reader never receives an article page. PressReader through a public library is the best free route to those papers.
Do other Australian Community Media papers work?
The regional titles share The Canberra Times’ platform and paywall, so links from the Illawarra Mercury, The Examiner, The Border Mail and similar papers should load the same way. We tested The Canberra Times and the Newcastle Herald directly.