A family owned, independent newspaper,The News has been a voice for its community since the early 1870s. It is currently produced, printed and published in Westport,  Monday to Friday.

The Westport News was started by the self-styled Buller Lion, politician Eugene O'Conor. He wanted a mouthpiece when he sought election to the Nelson Province superintendency. O'Conor lost, but his Buller News, later to become the Westport News, has survived since 23 November, 1873

In 1896 Walter Atkin purchased the Westport News as a morning daily.  In 1880 it was called the Buller News and Captain Charles Wright appears as its owner.  Robert Caldwell Reid came in 1889, enlarged the News as a morning daily and carried it on until his death in 1897.

The longest standing owners were the Atkin family, who owned the paper for 50 years, and Colin and Mary Warren, who owned it for 40 years.

Walter Atkin bought the paper and members of his family controlled the paper until 1945. Atkin left it (in 1911) to his sons who carried on as Atkin and Co. until 1945 when Frank Hinton (editor) and Alan Leslie Wood (manager) acquired the paper and formed a private company.  

The Warrens bought the paper in 1978 from Nelson Evening Mail owners, the Lucas family, who were printing the Westport News in Nelson and flying it to Westport daily. Under the Warrens, The News bought its own printing press, and production returned to Westport.

In 2017 the Warrens sold The News to the paper's long-serving chief reporter Lee Scanlon and her husband, Kevin.

23 November 2023, the newspaper celebrated its 150^th year milestone as an independently owned West Coast newspaper. https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/media-technology/503108/150-year-milestone-for-independently-owned-west-coast-newspaper