In 2021, the CMT received a grant from the Vincent Fairfax Family Foundation (VFFF) to examine the conditions challenging rural and regional media and whether it is possible for metro-based news outlets to develop models to facilitate the running of more regional news for metro audiences. In the first phase of this three-year project, we wanted to investigate the level of regional news making it to metro audiences, and whether it is sufficiently well profiled, particularly given the large number of city folk who appear to be moving to regional locations.
This project is in partnership with the Guardian Australia, which is building a rural reporting network. Over the life of the project, Guardian Australia will embed five UTS journalism graduates in rural and regional communities to support this network. Already, three graduates have joined the network and their reporting from Gilgandra and Denniliquin in NSW and Townsville in Queensland has been viewed by large national and international audiences.
Key findings from our first year of research are:
- There are mixed levels of coverage of regional Australia in metro media, with News Corp’s The Daily Telegraph significantly ahead of either Guardian Australia or the Nine News Group’s newspaper The Sydney Morning Herald.
- In broadcast outlets, Nine News produces more regional coverage than either the ABC or the Seven Network.
- Coverage is overwhelmingly responsive to events rather than initiated by research within newsrooms. This was evident too in regional news coverage during the 2022 federal election campaign which may indicate a marginalisation of local issues, resourcing challenges or that models premised on local-to-national editorial drivers are less efficient during election campaigns.
- Less than ten percent of homepage stories on any given day were regional stories. And whilst some outlets have dedicated homepage sections for a small number of regional stories, it is rare for stories to appear outside these containers and rare for metro media to amplify them on social media.
- There is a role for a healthy regional news ecosystem to play in ensuring the integrity of information used by metro-based outlets. Local media, with its knowledge of local communities, can fact check what reporters from larger centres report.
Have a read of our 1st report here.
Monica Attard, CMT Co-Director