For the past three years, the Centre for Media Transition has been examining what impact the contraction of regional media has had on the amount of news and information we receive in big city markets. Has it impacted the extent to which regional communities can have a voice in big policy debates?
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The federal government is now looking at how it can help news media – across the board – deal with the phenomenal challenges it has been experiencing for the past two decades – and more intensely since Covid 19 which led to the shuttering of hundreds of local news outlets.
So, where to now for regional news media in Australia after a decade of brutal cutbacks and closures? How will people living in urban areas 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?
Recently, we brought together four people who have views on these issues.
In this episode, you will hear from Fleur Connick, a UTS journalism graduate assigned to Deniliquin NSW for Guardian Australia under our program of research, Calla Wahlquist, Rural and Regional Editor at Guardian Australia, Hugh Martin, the former head of ABC regional and Tony Bosworth, Editor at West Wyalong Advocate, and the former Editor of Broken Hill's Barrier Truth which has now sadly closed.