For some regional Queenslanders heading to buy a News Corp Australia paper from their local newsagent this weekend, the purchase will be one of their last.

News Corp has confirmed it will stop delivering its titles to certain parts of regional Queensland after September 26 and following more than three months of lobbying from concerned newsagents.

News Corp wrote to select newsagents in March informing them it planned to cease physically distributing eight mastheads including The Courier-Mail, The Australian, and The Daily Telegraph, due to the "very high cost" of distribution.

Longreach newsagent Rob Luck said he offered a range of solutions to the media company to try to reverse the decision.

However, on Thursday afternoon he received an email from News Corp confirming it would go ahead with its plan of ceasing distribution after September 26.

Towns further west than Charters Towers in the north, Emerald in central Queensland, and in some parts of the state's south-west will be affected. 

Distribution will cease in the regional centres of Longreach and Mount Isa.

Charleville in the state's south-west will remain unaffected, after News Corp organised a cheaper, alternative freight arrangement.

Residents in impacted towns will no longer have access to a physical daily newspaper covering state, national, and international affairs.

Consultation just for show, says newsagent

In June, News Corp's managing director for Queensland and News Regional Media, Jason Scott, visited Longreach to meet with concerned newsagents.

Mr Luck, who has owned one of Longreach's two newsagencies for 26 years, said he was told "the door is ajar" but was sceptical there was any intent to reverse the decision.

"It took from March to mid-June for someone to come and I will, in inverted commas, use the word 'consult' with us," Mr Luck said.

Federal minister and Member for Maranoa David Littleproud, who has lobbied News Corp Australasia's executive chairman Michael Miller, said the company did "not go into those conversations in good faith".

"It simply was just going through the motions to pat us on the back and send us on our way," he said.

In his letter to Mr Luck on Thursday, obtained by the ABC, Mr Scott said he had "personally investigated several possible solutions to the unsustainably high cost" of distributing papers to Longreach.

Newsagents offer freight solutions

Mr Luck said he provided "a range of solutions" to Mr Scott in the hope News Corp would change its mind.

They included adding a freight charge to the papers' costs, sending The Sunday Mail with Monday's The Courier-Mail to consolidate freight costs, and minimising the number of papers newsagents could claim credits for if they did not sell them.

Mr Scott said a discount offer by the freight provider was "not enough to significantly reduce" News Corp's losses.

He rejected the suggestion to add a freight charge, saying it would drive up paper prices and lower demand.

News Corp estimates western Queensland represents about 1 per cent of its physical newspaper sales.

Mr Luck said both locals and tourists would be happy to pay more for a physical paper.

"Tourists regularly say, 'Why aren't the papers dearer? How come they're the same price [as in the city]?'

He said he expected backlash in-store from customers.

"I think they'll be extremely angry," Mr Luck said.

"We're going to take the brunt of that. It's not going to be some faceless figure in News Corp that's going to be copping that."

News Corp offers digital solution

In a statement to the ABC, News Corp said:

We will do everything in our power to help migrate those readers to our digital platforms where they will for the first time receive the whole News Corp Australia network 24-hours a day through well-priced subscription offers. 

Among the initiatives being planned we will have a designated call centre to help our print readers migrate to digital and walk them through any problems they encounter. 

Mr Littleproud said that solution would not work.

"There is an elderly cohort in our community that have no interest in trying to get on to an iPad or a tablet to do this," he said.

Mr Luck said the digital solution sounded like a "false promise".

Newspaper decline 'cancer that will grow'

Mr Luck said News Corp's decision to "geographically discriminate" against western Queenslanders ignored the company's "social responsibility".

He said a move to prioritise equal access over its bottom dollar could have earned the company kudos from readers across the state. 

"They've missed the boat from the positive reaction that they could have got and the support they would get, not only from this area, but the ones on the coast," he said.

Mr Littleproud said the company had treated regional newsagents with contempt, not respect.

He said the preference of digital over physical news would be "a cancer" that would "grow across society".

Space to play or pause, M to mute, left and right arrows to seek, up and down arrows for volume.

Watch

Duration: 4 minutes 32 seconds4m 32s