[4] The News' content was then largely of community meetings and around eighty percent advertising, and Haslam later sold it to Gordon Middleton.
Malcolm joined the 4th Light Horse Regiment and was wounded at Gallipoli, dying in a Gibraltar hospital in January 1915.
While Roy developed a reputation as "a responsible publisher and progressive printer", senator Robert Elliott, who owned a newspaper chain, wanted to purchase both the News and the competing Shepparton Advertiser and merge them into one daily paper.
[2][5] Elliott purchased twenty-five percent of Goulburn Valley Newspapers, the company which published the Advertiser.
The competition went on for twenty years until the board of the struggling Goulburn Valley Newspapers decided "to do all we can to enable the News to buy the Advertiser", which it did in 1953.
After a fire in 1951, the News operated in the cellar for several weeks and Don spent a few years organising for the construction of new premises.
[2][5] During the 1960s, newspapers in Melbourne made large profits from television stations and looked to buy small rural papers.
However, printing costs had become high and McPherson Newspapers let David Syme, the publisher of The Age, buy a thirty-five percent stake.
[5] The new owners bought four new newspapers, launched Country News and moved to Melbourne Road, Kialla in June 1988.