When all hope is lost, and despair seems ready to set in, a white knight sometimes rides through the darkness to our rescue. It just so happens that this week, our knight in shining armour charges in from the west. Kerry Stokes, the billionaire owner of Seven West Media, has launched a fresh assault on the east coast with Australia’s newest national masthead, The Nightly. Marketed as a free daily for the ‘mainstream middle’, The Nightly aims to serve the Australian public through an app (currently the top download in the App Store News category), a daily digital paper, and a website. From the outset, it makes a lot of sense. A new digital first masthead, focused on providing free and ‘sensible’ news to ‘mainstream Australia’. Sign me up!
But hold on, what – or who – is this ever-repeated ‘mainstream Australia’?
Thankfully Walkley-winning Nightly editor Anthony De Ceglie (also editor-in-chief of West Australian Newspapers) chose the first issue to signpost exactly what The Nightly is all about. In an editorial titled, ‘The Nightly will fight for the mainstream middle’, De Ceglie said the new masthead’s role is to ‘fight for working-class economic conservatism while supporting socially progressive causes that make sense’, a statement that somehow raises more questions than it answers.
Beyond clearly signposting political persuasions in what is ostensibly a paper designed to produce public interest journalism, the editorial goes on to identify the culprits behind Australia’s falling productivity. Put simply, the fault is at the hands of ‘Ministers … introducing layers of industrial relations laws that fly in the very face of economic ambition’, ‘over-zealous environmental bodies which have been overtaken by fanatics’ and ‘callow radicals not above hoodwinking Indigenous peoples to carry out their own cynical agendas’.
Fighting words, and even stronger still when you remember that no knight charges into battle alone. Sitting alongside Stokes at his round table, dedicated to the mission of informing sensible Australians, are a number of faithful companions, namely, mining magnates Gina Rinehart and Chris Ellison, and Harvey Norman CEO Katie Page, who have all stepped forward in their support of the new digital. They are joined by a band of diverse advertisers (for the purpose of this metaphor let’s call them … squires?), whose industries are as broad as mining (Woodside), gambling (Ladbrokes), and well … more mining (BHP).
Perhaps then it is no surprise that alongside a three-page feature (part one of a four-part series) on the Prime Minister’s failure in the Voice to Parliament referendum, and a cartoon showing Albanese’s lament at the establishment of a new newspaper, the first issue of The Nightly also included a piece on Stokes’s longtime nemesis Andrew ‘Twiggy’ Forrest’s besieged oyster company, and an article warning MPs to support the minerals ‘ecosystem’.
However, no one should be judged by their first day on the job, and there is potential for an interesting disruption of Australian news media. The Nightly has signed a content-licensing deal with the New York Times and The Economist, flipped the typical publishing schedule by going live each weeknight at 7pm, and has a digital-only focus for its output. These factors, alongside a small team of approximately 15, may produce a leaner, sleeker operation that could slay the metaphorical dragons at The Australian and The Daily Telegraph.
Whether this venture fizzles or becomes a fairytale is a story only time will tell. Yet, when one hero rises, another so often falls ...
Vice Media, once valued at $5.7 billion, made headlines last week with the announcement of the closure of Vice.com. This decision comes as part of a broader laying-off drive that commenced last year, with several hundred staff members now facing job cuts. Despite its innovative approach, targeting a younger audience through engaging storytelling across digital, television, and film platforms, the company succumbed to the challenges posed by disrupted revenue models, ultimately leading to its declaration of bankruptcy and sale to creditors in 2023.
Even closer to home, anticipated job losses loom as Warner Bros Discovery, proprietors of New Zealand's television network Three, outline plans to shutter its news service Newshub by the end of June after being in business for 25 long years, in what is being referred to as New Zealand’s 'technical recession'.
With the future of these three organisations uncertain, one begins to wonder. If two close for every one that opens, will there soon be no one left to guard the gate?
Nick Newling, CMT Research Assistant
Ayesha Jehangir, CMT Postdoctoral Fellow