John Miller Sweet founded the Miners Advocate and Northumberland Recorder in Plattsburg, near Newcastle, New South Wales in 1873. Plattsburg was then a mining town situated adjacent to the mining toen of Wallsend (now a suburb of Newcastle). Within three years Sweet's paper had flourished, becoming a tri-weekly with a circulation of 4000 copies a week. According to the Newcastle Herald's website, Sweet's father-in-law, James Fletcher, believed the Hunter Valley region was ready for a newspaper with a bigger circulation
ished daily and persuaded his son-in-law to expand. In 1876 Sweet merged his paper with the Newcastle Chronicle (1858-1876). The first edition of the Newcastle Morning Herald and Miners Advocate, appeared on 3 April.
