News this week that the Bay Post, Narooma News, Moruya Examiner and the mastheads of the Bega News and other ex-Fairfax local papers that only recently came under the the ownership of NINE as Australian Community Media, along with 160-plus regional and rural titles have been sold to real estate marketing guru Antony Catalano. Catalano, backed by Thorney Investments have bought for themselves a very large chunk of Australian regional papers for the bargain basement price of just $115 million. Claire Wheaton of ABC South East sought the opinion of Dr Denis Muller, a Senior Research Fellow in the Centre for Public Policy at the University of Melbourne and a leading expert on media ethics who worked as a journalist for 27 years including Assistant Editor at The Sydney Morning Herald and Associate Editor at 'The Age'.
