Has there ever been a more stressful time to work for a regional newspaper?
After decades of revenue declines and a couple of big years covering drought and bushfires with shrinking newsrooms, along comes coronavirus and turns the world upside down.
Over recent weeks local newspapers which have been at the heart of their communities since the 19th century are closing or suspending publication as advertising collapses.
On the banks of the Murray, Mildura’s only daily newspaper, the Sunraysia Daily, shifted to a weekly and stood down most of its staff. In far western NSW, Broken Hill’s Barrier Daily Truth halted publication. The nation’s biggest publisher, News Corp Australia will stop printing 60 community metro titles, including The Manly Daily and Caboolture Herald.
In my 20 year career as a journalist I’ve reported my share of major news events, from 9/11 to London’s 7/7 and the Sydney siege, while attempting to keep upright as the winds of disruptive technological change pulled the media industry asunder.
But nothing we’ve faced this century, no terrorist attack or financial crisis, can compare to the profound, warp speed shock of this global pandemic.
Regional journalism has been in rapid transition over the past few decades, and there are now grave fears that coronavirus may put it into a death spiral without government support.
Between 2008 and 2018, 106 local and regional newspaper titles closed across Australia.
These closures have left 21 local government areas without coverage from a single local newspaper (either print or online), including 16 LGAs in regional Australia.
Now in just a couple of weeks, dozens more communities are becoming news deserts.
And it’s the same story in every nation. Witness these headlines from the US last week:
The slow motion death by a thousand cuts narrative of the past few decades has been turbocharged, and disruptive cyclical trends which may have taken half a decade or more to pan out are reaching their denouements in days.
'History is now on fast forward,' says Robert D. Kaplan, managing director of Eurasia Group, the world’s largest political-risk consultancy. Seismic changes that have been hovering on the horizon for regional publishers are here now.
Regional communities need reporters to keep local government accountable. The crisis in local journalism is a crisis for the health of regional communities. As New York Times commentator Jim Rutenberg has said 'A vibrant free press keeps governments honest and voters informed.'
Last week, the Public Interest Journalism Initiative (PIJI) called on the Federal Government to put in place emergency measures to save the country's news industry, with a particular focus on already-struggling local and regional publishing.
PIJI suggested an immediate release of $40m from the government's Regional and Small Publishers Innovation Package, with an additional $60m investment to secure the sector.
On Monday, the government announced that $5m from the fund would be released 'to assist news publishers with the significant challenges they face in the current media landscape' with application and processing timelines shorter than in previous rounds. It’s not enough.
Last month Rutenberg’s successor as New York Times media columnist, my former colleague Ben Smith, argued that while the coronavirus is likely to hasten the end of advertising-driven media, governments should not rescue it.
'The time is now to make a painful but necessary shift' said Smith.
'Abandon most for-profit local newspapers, whose business model no longer works, and move as fast as possible to a national network of nimble new online newsrooms. That way, we can rescue the only thing worth saving about America’s gutted, largely mismanaged local newspaper companies — the journalists.'
I don’t think we should let newspaper publishers die: companies like ACM, Elliot Newspapers and McPherson Media have profound connections with their communities – and have been moving as fast as they can to position their businesses for the future.
But I definitely think we need creative ways to ensure that the estimated 2,340 regional journalists are all still employed post COVID-19.
This crisis gives regional publishers a crystal clear opportunity to clearly redefine their value proposition – trustworthy, locally produced news. They should move fast to offer their communities smart new ways to support the vital work they do.
By Simon Crerar, Former Editor-in-chief of BuzzFeed Australia and CMT Advisory board member. He is currently trying to figure out a sustainable future for local news at j-project.org