The sad sudden closure of The Melbourne Anglican
18 January 2026
By Dr Muriel Porter
The news that TMA has been closed is causing shock across the Diocese of Melbourne. The diocese’s interim Chief Executive Office, Matthew Crichton, confirmed the news in an email to the clergy, weeks after rumours circulated that the TMA staff were made redundant on the eve of Christmas.
According to Mr Crichton, the closure has come about because of “the financial realities currently facing the Diocese”. The decision was made by Archbishop in Council “earlier in 2025”, apparently after “a careful and considered review”, he said. It would be good to know how wide-ranging that review was, because people outside the Council, including people with an interest in the matter, did not know about the decision until the closure email.
If there had been a normal Synod meeting last October – there wasn’t one because there was no Archbishop in place – the Council’s budget would have been up for discussion. There would have been an opportunity to debate the decision, to see if there was any way this could have been avoided. And we would not have been taken by surprise. Synod members could have reported the news to their parishes, and it would have been made known in the final editions of TMA.
Now parishioners will be told only if their vicars decide to tell them. Otherwise, they’ll find out when the next expected edition fails to turn up, because the December edition said nothing about the closure. TMA’s valuable weekly digital newsletters, ‘Newsstand’ and ‘Best of the Week’, that brought us religion news from around the world as well as the Diocese, have also ceased publication.
It seems the staff knew nothing of their fate when they put the December edition to bed, as they asked people to engage with them through letters. Write to us, they said. The letters section, they said in a notice, was ‘your voice’.
Sadly, our voice has now gone. In future, Mr Crichton says, “communications from the Diocese will be shared through the Anglican Diocese of Melbourne (ADOM) website and official social media channels”. Does this mean there will be no avenue for clergy and parishioners to have their say, to engage with the Diocese and each other?
And how will parishioners who are not comfortable with using social media find out what is going on? How will they engage with the church’s life beyond their parish? That is the sad reality behind this decision. Parishes are already largely isolated from diocesan life. Now they will be even more isolated. The diocese’s social cohesion – a term we are hearing a lot about in the wider world at present – may well be severely compromised.
TMA was the most highly awarded and respected diocesan newspaper in the country. It gave us much more than official diocesan news. Just look at the final edition – it contained articles about Gaza’s only Christian hospital, about the flooding crisis in South Sudan, a reflection on the state’s First People’s treaty, about AI and the doctrine of sin, book reviews, and much more. It provided rich food for our spiritual journey, as well as news.
The closure brings to end unbroken communication with the people of the Diocese that began in 1850, just three years after the Diocese was founded, with the creation of The Church of England Messenger. The names have changed over the years – the publication became TMA in 1994 – but for more than 170 years, the Diocese has had “a regular newspaper presence reflecting Anglican life, faith and witness in this place”, as Mr Crichton says.
It is well known that the Diocesan budget needs some urgent and far-reaching repair. Presumably other diocesan services are facing closure too. While we are also concerned about the financial realities, we must mourn that our core means of communication had to cease.
Dr Muriel Porter is a professional journalist, was a regular contributor to the TMA and its immediate forerunner, SEE. Dr Porter is a Member of the Committee of Victorian Anglicans Together.