Covid-19 has claimed another victim. On 14 April, Australian Community Media (ACM) announced that as a consequence of the impact of covid-19 and associated shutdowns, it:
- was temporarily closing its printing sites in Canberra, Murray Bridge, Wodonga and Tamworth from April 20 until June 29 2020
- was suspending publication of a number of non-daily newspapers. Limited news coverage would continue on websites of publications affected by the temporary shutdowns
- had given notice to landlords of more than 30 small offices around the country that it intends to exit lease arrangements
- had stood down staff affected by the suspensions of printing and publication.
The ACM changes followed the earlier decisions by News Corp Australia to pause production on 60 community newspaper titles in NSW, Victoria, Queensland and South Australia from April 9 and by the Nine group to cease printing several of its magazines and lift-outs. In making the changes, News Corp offered a migration strategy to try to encourage readers to switch to the the electronic version.
During this same period regional commercial TV broadcasters signaled their intention to cancel regional news services in the absence of direct financial assistance.
The Commonwealth Government has apparently announced announced a $50 million package to support public interest journalism across TV, newspapers and radio in regional and remote Australia. This appears to be a repackaging and extension of an existing scheme. At this point, I have been unable to find any real details on either Communications Minister Fletcher's or the ACMA websites.
Discussion
I suppose that I should begin with a declaration of interest and indeed bias. I have been a columnist for the Armidale Express for many years and have a long family connection with the New England media. Those who follow my blogs will also know that I have been very critical over many years of the strategies adopted by media groups and especially those owning country media in responding to changing technologies and markets. One side effect has been loss of market position and relevance within the communities they serve.
I make this point now because in direct personal and on-line discussion I have found to my consternation that while some agree with me that action is required to preserve local and regional media, others say why does it matter? They haven't provided real news for years.
I know that some of my colleague will bristle at this. They have tried to provide reporting and maintain focus in a world of constant corporate shifts, of big city and enterprise games, a world in which the purpose of local and regional media as defined by people like Ernest Sommerlad has been lost. One measure of this is the sheer discontent among a significant proportion of their present and ex customers.
I have tried to explain to my sceptical friends and contacts why I regard the preservation of local and regional media to be of fundamental importance. To extend my argument, I am going to take a city and then a country example.
For my present purposes, the population in south eastern Sydney can be broken into three groups.
The first is those who just live there, They may like their area, but their focus is elsewhere. They have little interest in local news. To them, the paper is just junk mail that ends up in their letter box or as waste on the lawn.
The second somewhat smaller group is those who have some connection with the area. Their children may go to school there, they may be involved with some local group, they may have some interest in what's on, what the councils are doing. They will pick the paper up and then put it in the trash.
The third and by far the smallest group is the community activists, the ones who are really interested in general and in particular causes including council activities. To them, the Southern Courier has been critical. How so? Well, the paper with its local focus provides a vehicle that is read by councillors, state and federal parliamentarians and by those in the mass media interested in stories with a local flavour.
Save Astrolabe Park demonstration
Astrolabe Park lies at the end of the street I used to live in in Daceyville, Sydney. It's an open space area that is also one of the few leash-free dog areas in Sydney.
With space now so scarce in Sydney for playing fields, the proposal was that the Park should be taken over for sporting fields. This was a serious challenge involving major sporting codes who wanted to establish high performance facilities.
For some obscure reasons, the locals plus dog owners from elsewhere were outraged. I became involved about twelve months before I returned to Armidale when I was, quite literally, bailed up be a neighbour that I knew in the street: "you will help won't you, Jim." I did so and in so doing met more people in that little suburb than I had in the previous five years. I am still a member of the Friends of Astrolabe Park.
In the end the Park was saved, at least for the present. I'm not sure that it would have been without the Southern Courier because that provided the initial platform. In treating the Southern Courier as just another masthead, in thinking that it can provide the same service with subscription behind a paywall, News Corp has guaranteed its extinction at least as an effective voice and probably its very survival itself.
Many of the points I made about the Southern Courier apply to the Armidale, but more so. For many and especially older residents, the print Armidale Express is their only source of local news. Most are not active on-line. They may listen to the radio or TV news which carry some local stories but the print Express whatever its imperfections is central especially when it comes to things such as hatches, matches and dispatches.
Like many people in Armidale I am active in the on-line world. It is quite a vibrant world that does give me a lot of local news, allows me to promote my own causes, but it's quite imperfect because it is actually quite limited.
I was talking to friends today in town who belong to the it does not matter if the print Express closes group. I challenged this, pointing out that so many people still relied on it. I asked them where they would get their news? You see, one issue is that the news pyramid actually depends on the existence of a solid initial source point. Take that away and you have a gap that cannot be filled.
Can the e-edition of the paper substitute? If we ignore the older people who will die out, it may at least partially in the longer term. But it's not there yet and may never get there. I am drifting into strategy questions that link back to the start of the post. So keeping things simple.
If at this point the print edition vanishes, then it will leave a gap that cannot be easily filled, that will impoverish local life in ways that cannot be easily seen. This applies to other papers as well.
I hope that this break in printing might actually force us to ask what we want from our papers, to challenge the papers and especially management on the service they provide, to answer the question why they are important to us. I accept that this is naive view, but I am tired of managements that treat papers as simply another masthead.
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