James Taylor, a Scotsman, began his working life apprenticed to a tailor. But by the 1870s he was living at Gawler, running a successful photography business. In the early 1880s he moved the business to Port Augusta. It was very much a family concern, James' wife Isabella being one of the colony's first women 'portrait operators', and two of the Taylor sons were to follow their father's lead in experimenting in collotype publishing of photographs. Collotype, a process used for printing photographs within publications, was later made obsolete by the cheaper process of offset lithography. In 1901, with his sons Donald and Frank, and Peter Moran, Taylor established the Port Augusta and Stirling Illustrated news. The small illustrated newspaper ran to just seven issues. Each issue contained several collotypes depicting prominent residents, sporting teams, visiting ships and local works including the building of the copper smelters. Although apparently well received, the newspaper ceased in August due to the pressures of the collotype printing business which was the family's main concern.

News coverage The opening issue claimed the intention was not to produce a publication in competition with the local newspaper, the Port Augusta dispatch, and consequently the News articles were mostly restricted to reports of social events, sport, concerts, and clubs. However, major local works, such as the building of the smelters, shipping news and the beginning stages of the Transcontinental Railway, were also covered.

Geographical coverage Apart from Port Augusta itself, most of the news coverage was for the towns of Stirling, Tarcoola, Leigh Creek, Iron Knob and Quorn.