Rupert Murdoch’s little excursion to Noosa and the Sunshine Coast has proved no holiday: After six years of butting heads with the residents – APN’s ‘Noosa News’ and ‘Sunshine Coast Daily’, he’s going home.

Murdoch’s Australian operation, News Limited has announced that ‘Noosa Journal’, its Maroochydore and Caloundra stablemates, and ‘Weekender’ magazine will close next week.

It’s close to a trifecta for local publisher Lindsay Bock, who launched and then sold the Noosa title to News’ Quest Community Newspapers division in 2006.

A decade before he had launched and sold the ‘Noosa Citizen’ to Rural Press (now part of Fairfax Media) which pitched it with other Gympie-based products to APN.

News gained the ‘Weekender’ magazine – launched with much fanfare by Michael Hannan – as part of a package of newspapers and magazines purchased from Sydney-based Eastern Suburbs Newspapers.

News launched the Caloundra and Maroochydore editions the following year, competing more directly with APN, which retaliated with two more editions of its own.

But while eastern suburbs residents are doing it tough as a result of the global financial crisis, their beach resort of choice has been suffering. Property prices there are down by a third or more, especially in the fashionable multi-million segment.

Now News, which publishes weekly giveaways in three Sunshine Coast centres, with substantial property liftouts – including some heatset products and a consolidated edition inserted into the ‘Courier Mail’ – has decided to call it quits.

News managing director for newspapers and digital products Jerry Harris – until recently managing director of Queensland Newspapers, which owns Quest – made the announcement “with regret”.

He blamed continuing slow trading conditions on the Sunshine Coast for the fact that they were “no longer commercially viable”.

Some staff will be offered jobs with other News operations in South East Queensland, but the company says there will be a number of redundancies. It will beef up its ‘Courier-Mail’ office in the area to improve local coverage, and maintain its involvement with keynote events.