On Wednesday 7 August, the CMT will bring an online panel together to ask, where to now for regional news media in Australia after a decade of brutal cutbacks and closures? This event will take into account some of the findings of the near three years of research we have been conducting on how regional news finds its way and is represented to metro audiences. This research, funded by the Vincent Fairfax Family Foundation, has resulted in the establishment of the Guardian Australia Rural Reporting Network and the appointment of five UTS Journalism graduates to regional reporting locations for Guardian Australia.
Monica will be speaking with one of our student reporters assigned to Guardian Australia for a year, the editor of Guardian Australia’s Rural Reporting Network, the former head of ABC rural and regional reporting and a former editor of the now defunct Broken Hill Barrier Truth:
- Fleur Connick, UTS journalism graduate assigned to Deniliquin NSW for Guardian Australia, currently ABC Science cadet
- Calla Wahlquist, Rural and Regional Editor at Guardian Australia
- Hugh Martin, ABC Regional Editor, Victoria
- Tony Bosworth, Editor at West Wyalong Advocate, former Editor at Broken Hill's Barrier Truth.
They’ll address, among other things, how people living in urban areas will know what is happening in rural and regional Australia if there’s a diminishing number of journalists to report it? And how will the voices of Australians living in rural and regional Australia be heard in the big policy debates we see being discussed in metro media?
We're holding the event online at 12pm so you can pop in over lunch.