Another blow to the North; Paywalls damage regional reporting - and cohesion - across Northern NSW, the broader New England

On Monday 5 January 1920,  Victor Thompson as editor of the Tamworth Observer (now Northern Daily Leader) re-launched the campaign for self-government for the North with an editorial on country neglect. Over the next eleven issues,  he published a series of articles calling for the establishment of a new state in Northern NSW. 

Following the initial success of the Thompson campaign, a meeting of Northern newspapers held at Glen Innes in March 1920 agreed to form a New State Press League and Press Propaganda Executive with Thompson as secretary to direct an intensive propaganda campaign.

Over the next twelve months, the twenty-seven newspapers that had joined the League funded the Propaganda Executive to distribute news and editorial material to Northern newspapers. By August 1920, sixty newspapers from the Upper Hunter to the border were publishing League material. 

These newspapers were intensely parochial, dedicated to their own communities. They were also in competition with each other. And yet, they could combine together to campaign for Northern interests.

In Sommerlad’s view, the provincial editor who had “a right conception of his office”, and was not afraid to offer constructive criticism, was the most important citizen in the community. “He can be a local king-maker if he guards jealously the sacred flame and wins and holds the confidence of his readers.” Rod Kirkpatrick

The role of the country and New England press was articulated by pressmen such as Ernest Christian Sommerlad.

Sommerlad was a shrewd businessman operating a business, but believed in the profession of journalism and he had a very particular view of the role of the newspaper, something he articulated many years later in his book  Mightier than the sword; a handbook on journalism, broadcasting, propaganda, public relations and advertising. (Angus and Robertson 1950).

To Sommerlad, reporting was a critical part of the role, promoting the interests of the area served by the paper an equally important part, leading public opinion a further important part. In these roles, he did not see the interests of, say, Glen Innes in narrow parochial terms but as part of a broader whole.

All the Northern editors were well aware of the power of local parochialism, a parochialism that had so often impeded cooperative effort. Recognising their own marketplaces, they sought to overcome this to greater or lesser extent by featuring stories from elsewhere in the North, by combining to support cooperative action beyond immediate town boundaries. So many things that we now have exist because of that. Whenever papers played just to the local, their own towns were the ones who finally lost.

Our say: Does Tamworth need its own uni with Armidale up the road? Northern Daily Leader 15 February 2019

In 1950, all the Northern media from Newcastle to the border was locally or regionally owned. By 2000,almost  none were. Newspapers became mastheads, parts of chains. Their focus became parochial. This process was accentuated by the decline in the sense of the broader Northern identity after the loss of the 1967 new state referendum. The result is an intense localism that benefits neither the papers nor the communities they seek to serve.

In the past, papers would report and support things that were seen to be of benefit to the broader North. That is no longer true. Over the last twenty years they have all become so narrow that I cannot think of a single example where  one paper has campaigned or at least editorially supported an initiative in another place on the grounds that it would benefit the North as a whole. I stand to be corrected here, mind you.

The problem with the heading I quoted above is that it plays into the Armidale v Tamworth meme, something that both the local papers have played to before. Of course Tamworth needs its own campus, although that to my mind should be a UNE campus because that facilitates cooperative effort. Otherwise, it's just more fragmentation of the North.

Paywalls localise, stop people following the broader story, further fragment the North

This particular post was triggered by the introduction of paywalls on the main Fairfax papers in the North from the Newcastle Herald north thus extending the paywalls across much of the Northern press. The effects are quite pernicious, made more so because the number of visit before the wall hits is limited to five a month.   They reflect a very particular view of the role of the papers and the markets they serve.

It hits me hard because I try to write about and report on the whole North. This means constant browsing and checking  I simply cannot afford to subscribe to every paper. So now I find myself, for example, effectively locked out of Newcastle. The problem is made worse because of the narrowing of coverage in individual papers.

Does all this matter? Well, it depends upon your perspective. If, like me, you interested in the broader North then I think that it does. But it also locks out people such as the broader New England diaspora who remain interested, can be interested, in particular issues and areas but who do not wish to subscribe to a paper when they are no longer interested in the detail of local life. I think that the practical impact here is to further narrow the influence of papers, extend the influence of other forms of media.

From a purely personal and practical perspective, I have to try to work out how I can maintain my broader analysis when my access to the main papers is limited to headline scans and a carefully rationed click through. My frustration is increased because when I search through google I keep coming across firewalls, if I see a FB or twitter feed and click ditto outcome. At least with the Fairfax papers, there are some smaller papers not behind firewall, while there is at least that miniscule 5 story limit. With the Northern Rivers papers now controlled by Newcorp, the firewall appears absolute.

 No doubt I will find a work-around solution. but it is another blow for the North as a whole and indeed, in the end, for the papers themselves.