Australian Community Media (ACM), publisher of the Bay Post and Narooma News is the latest publisher to enter into talks with Facebook to see the social media giant pay for news it publishes.
Mumbrella reports :
"Over 40 ACM regional, rural and suburban mastheads and publications will be covered by the agreement, including Newcastle Herald, Canberra Times, Bendigo Advertiser, The Advocate, Katherine Times, Illawarra Mercury, and more."
There is however nothing on the horizon that will see the Bay Post or Narooma News benefit from the initiative that will see ACM mastheads added to the new FaceBook News page, much like the dedicated Google News Showcase automatically accessing using RSS Feed.
Presently, and as expected, the Bay Post performs as little more than a zombie clone within the Google News Showcase App. As to their Facebook presence of local news (not regional cloning) it remains virtually no-existent.
Above: Current performance for the last week by ACM Mastheads on Facebook.
The reality for us locally is that The Moruya Examiner was an Australian Community Media newspaper that merged into the Bay Post (serving Batemans Bay, NSW) early in 2020.
The Australian Newsroom Mapping Project's (ANMP) logged the suspension of the Bay Post/Moruya Examiner due to COVID-19, but the merger of the two papers was not logged.
There has been no statement by ACM in regards to the Moruya Examiner and whether it might ever return.
At ACM, 14 mastheads no longer have a dedicated web presence that includes the Moruya Examiner ; eight in NSW, four in South Australia and two in Western Australia.
