CMT regional news report and big data's shadow
Peter Fray, Co-Director, Centre for Media Transition
Hi and welcome to the fourth issue of the CMT newsletter.
Next week the CMT team are looking forward to presenting our work on regional news media at the Mumbrella Publish conference on Thursday 19 September in Sydney.
Our ‘Regional News Media: State of Play’ report is a stocktake of key insights into the sector by us (CMT), the University of Canberra’s Digital News Report team, the Public Interest Journalism Initiative (PIJI) and researchers overseas. The report is part of the Google News Initiative.
There’s plenty of data and information to consider — some of it is quite character-forming, but there's also much that is a cause for optimism. There’s value in being part of a community. Copies of the report will be available at the Mumbrella conference.
The Mumbrella Publish conference panel will include Antony Catalano, the new boss of the former Fairfax regional and rural titles, known as Australian Community Media. There will be much interest in what he says about using news titles in Canberra, Wollongong, Newcastle, Bendigo and Ballarat (among other places) to build a sustainable business.
That has been done before by Rural Press, but can it be done again in these less lucrative times?