The crisis facing local journalism is playing out the world over. A new report charts what other countries are doing in response and what Australia can learn.
- Professor (Communication), Deakin University
While small publications are springing up to fill “news deserts” there are concerns around quality and transparency.
With the news that more regional papers are cutting jobs, it’s time we took seriously the damaging effects of losing local papers in non-metropolitan areas.
Across Australia, the top ten regions for socio-economic disadvantage are based in rural and regional areas. Local newspapers are especially important in such communities.
The majority of country press audiences prefer to read their local paper in print than online. In fact, many said they would stop reading their papers if they went digital only.
Small newspapers and new start-ups face significant barriers to receiving government grant money and a share of ad revenue from Google and Facebook, making their survival less than assured.
News Corp’s announcement it will stop printing 100 suburban and community newspapers is another blow for regional Australia and the the media landscape more broadly.
Rural communities have become resentful of city residents swooping in for food, medical supplies and shelter in vacation homes. We need a better strategy for allocating resources in the pandemic.
Small newspapers across Australia are closing or going digital-only in the economic fall-out from the coronavirus pandemic. This is what we need to do to save them.
Big cities are seen as the centre of everything, which creates an attitude that often devalues the work and skills of rural professionals. And sometimes even they subconsciously buy into this.
Before media reform becomes a runaway train, we need to return to the drawing board and rethink the maps that define and guide broadcasters on reporting news for “local areas”.
Some of the bush tales about regional news that are circulating in the ongoing debate about media reform need to be debunked.
After residents in the NSW coastal town of Kiama woke to the sound of emergency sirens earlier this week, chances are they grabbed a copy of the local newspaper, the Independent, to find out about the…
Australia’s “human headline” Derryn Hinch built his fame in radio and television by - often controversially - “naming and shaming” those he subjected to the media blowtorch. But today, Hinch, as do many…
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