News Corp’s decision to “suspend” (expect “cease”) publication of 60 suburban titles has sent a shivering premonition of mortality through Australia’s media. It’s prompting calls for bailouts from usual critics of rent-seeking, amid finger pointing at the usual villains in Facebook and Google.
But throwing money into the gurgling drain of print media is not the answer. Bailouts? Sure. But for local journalism that serves the community, not dying business models. These closures were coming. The advertising collapse has made it sooner, rather than later.
The COVID-19 pandemic is turbo-charging two pre-existing trends: it’s encouraging a flight to quality journalism (that’s the good news!) and it’s collapsing advertising in media (that’s the bad!).
Insiders claim audiences across all channels are up by between 20 to 30% — more online, particularly for news. Trusted quality is the winner, as the latest Nielsen data of online news traffic shows the ABC leaping to a 40% margin over commercial rivals.
Advertising? Down by about the same amount, with some media — like print — worse off than others. Commercial media are struggling to monetise the increased traffic online as advertisers are reluctant to appear alongside coronavirus stories despite their higher readership.
Local journalism can’t resist the advertising fall. But it can survive by cashing in on the first trend — by reimagining communities, understanding their needs and delivering where they are: online.
Large chains like News Corp have been gutting the “local” out of local print media for a quarter of a century, cutting and consolidating their way to sustain profits as advertising has dwindled.
Editing and production has been centralised, often in the centre of major cities, far from the communities the papers are supposed to be serving. Design and layout has been standardised. Content is heavily syndicated from masthead to masthead. Meanwhile, the surviving strong work being produced by local journalists struggles to get a look in.
Over the past few years, News Corp has been winding back printing and distribution, with door-to-door delivery replaced by bulk drops into cafes and corner stores in areas of low-value to advertisers. Printing frequency was cut. For example, in January 2018, the Manly Daily, serving the notoriously insular peninsula, went bi-weekly.
The suburban papers were a delivery system for advertising, principally real estate and local services. The internet delivers both more effectively than print. If you want to blame tech platforms, blame Gumtree and realestate.com.au.
It’s not just suburbans. It’s regionals as well. Already two regional dailies and about a dozen non-dailies have been suspended or closed, though one, the Sunraysia Daily, will use the federal government’s JobKeeper package to print a Saturday edition.
Print tragics (that is, most journalists) will mourn the changes. Particularly sad was the close of Broken Hill’s Barrier Daily Truth, which, union-owned, was the last surviving relic of Australia’s 20th century tradition of Labour Dailies.
Most of the remaining regional newspapers are owned either by News Corp (in Queensland and northern NSW) or by Australian Community Media (ACM) which bought out the former Fairfax/Rural Press chain after the Nine merger. ACM Executive Chair Antony Catalano told The Sydney Morning Herald this week that the company is meeting twice a day to monitor the situation.
In New Zealand, the government has taken the decision out of the hands of the media companies, declaring that non-daily print papers and magazines are not an essential service unless they are targeted at otherwise hard-to-reach regional or ethnic communities.
An early casualty has been New Zealand’s leading voice on culture, politics and current events, The Listener.
Launched by the country’s public broadcaster in 1939, it featured the country’s leading writers and sustained a circulation of about 45,000. It closed yesterday with the decision of the major magazine publisher in the country (and in Australia), the German-owned Bauer, to shut its New Zealand titles.
Nine, meanwhile, has cut back print in its metro mastheads here in Australia, with lift-out supplements for travel, entertainment and real estate suspended, along with non-weekly magazine inserts
It couldn’t be clearer: print’s Humpty Dumpty has fallen off the wall. Local newspapers can’t be put back together again. But strong, independent, local journalism that meets the needs of its communities can be rescued from the broken shards.
At age 82 years I know my world has changed. Not just changed but disappeared. Outlook, memories, values . . . and of a deep sensory connection with, to, that wonderful texture of print and paper binding self and all others connected around me.
My ‘local’ mirror of how I and others see, share, our worlds.
Pragmatism trumps all. Always has, always will. So I and others await . . . a new world of information, bondage. And ask, will it succeed? What means, process or attachment succeed, replace?
“triumph” replace.
I’m absolutely gutted by the loss of The Listener in NZ. My family have had a subscription for decades. I would always pick up a copy when visiting and could rely on finding smart, witty, politically astute commentary and analysis inside.
The local rags went straight in the bin at my place for years well before the internet onslaught. Real estate, local sport scores and council propaganda. When I was young many suburbs had two local papers and there were plenty of actual local stories though mostly not that interesting. Sometimes there was a bit of council scandal but anything juicy or complex was done by the main news outlets.
I like the idea of quality local journalism and suspect that the low costs of digital publication could help. I’d suggest though some form of aggregated localism – digital publications that did local coverage for lots of separate local areas.
I’m not sorry to see the demise of print. It’s an environmentally damaging form of communication. I’m quite happy to pay for the digital editions of the publications I read. Such as the Monthly, the Saturday Paper, the Age and der Spiegel.
Without local media, which in my area is almost entirely a regional weekly newspaper, local government will be subject to almost zero public scrutiny.
If municipal elections in Victoria proceed in October the information available to voters will be almost entirely bland motherhood statements from candidates.
Important planning and development matters and the roles of individual councillors in influencing decisions will be largely obscure.
Digital information technology is almost entirely controlled and manipulated by powerful commercial interests and if print media disappears it will become even more imperative that abuse of that form of communication is reined in.