Dark days might be on the doorstep of our own local Australian Community Media (ACM) mastheads that include the Bay Post, Narooma News and Bega News following the announcement by ACM this week Australian Community Media (ACM) has announced the closure of four major mastheads in Western Australia's South West, which is expected to also lead to job losses.
According to the ABC ACM told staff in a letter that it "has had no choice but to consider options in the face of a number of challenges faced by the company and the media industry more broadly, which have been exacerbated by the 80 per cent increase to newsprint costs, which are well publicised."
"We have identified several Western Australian mastheads that are not profitable from a revenue perspective," the letter said.
In the leadup to the NSW State Election the ACM mastheads forewarned of "Dark days ahead for communities across NSW .... unless the next state government acts to help local news".
Eurobodalla was once serviced by the Moruya Examiner that served the community from March 1866 until early 2020. ACM ceased publishing the Moruya Examiner and The Independent during the peak of COVID-19 and decided in July 2020 it would not return either, along with dozens of other titles to print as advertising collapsed because of the COVID-19 pandemic lockdown.
The once proud Moruya Examiner disappeared without apology and the good people of the Moruya district were to find their local news was now contained in the Bay Post.
Three important Fairfax mastheads once proudly delivered local news, specific to Batemans Bay, Moruya and Narooma. With the Moruya Examiner gone the two remaining have become little more than clones delivering the same front covers and the same regional headlines offering little differentiation between Batemans Bay news and Narooma news with scant reporting of Moruya.
The local mastheads were once twice a week and provided an insight into the warp and weft of each proud community. Since ACM took ownership the papers have diminished in both frequency and page count with the current editions being mere slivers serving to carry 7 pages of a total of 16 as advertising.
The letter sent to ACM Western Australian staff, as reported by the ABC, confirmed jobs were likely to be lost in regional towns.
"The proposal would result in ACM no longer requiring any jobs based at those mastheads to be completed by anyone," they said.
"The result of this is that, if we decide to proceed with the proposal and we are not able to redeploy you into another role, your employment would terminate by reason of redundancy." Of interest is the report that in the South West of Western Australia, the closure of key publications has lead to hyperlocal news outlets popping up to fill the gap. Locally we have the Braidwood Bugle, The Moruya Mail and The Beagle filling the gapping void that is becoming a vast chasm in the role played by once proud mastheads. In an effort to meet the recent 'crying poor' (again) of ACM and Newscorp the Federal government announced in 2020, a $50 million dollar public interest news gathering fund. Announcing that ACM was awarded $10.3 million from under the Public Interest News Gathering (Ping) grant scheme on 29 June 2020, the then communications minister, Paul Fletcher, said the grants were to help regional publishers sustain public interest journalism in the face of sharp falls in advertising revenue due to the pandemic.
“In the case of newspaper publishers the funding is conditional on titles which have been suspended recommencing printing, recommencing publications, and that will be a condition of the grant agreements which must be entered into before funding can flow,” Fletcher said at the time.
“In the case of newspaper publishers, that funding is for print newspapers. And so where printing of newspaper editions has been suspended, that will need to recommence before funding can flow.” Locally the "suspended" Moruya Examiner didn't come back. Now we see ACM once again crying poor insisting the State Government and Local councils bail them by way of advertising in their print editions. Given the dwindling circulation of these print editions and the rapidly disappearing, and predominantly cloned content one would ask if the government advertising was well spent. Next week will see another page removed from the Bay Post and Narooma News as Eurobodalla Council has published its final full page Council Noticeboard. In the leadup to the NSW State election NSW Labor announced a $9 million plan to safeguard regional and community media across New South Wales. Labor stated they would honour the existing commitment to provide $3 million to the Regional Media Fund for the round of grants currently underway, adding they wouldl also fund a second round of the same value to be rolled out in late 2023 to early 2024.
Currently an applicant can apply for up to three grants worth between $20-$60k.
Examples of eligible project types under this grant include:
developing and delivering online engagement strategies to complement and enhance existing distribution methods
undertaking website development and upgrades to improve the user experience and distribution
acquiring equipment that will increase the quality and/or quantity of print or video content
acquiring equipment to diversify content and distribution channels
developing and trialling innovative methods of distribution that will enable more people in regional NSW to access relevant news and content.
Hopefully that is enough to save our local ACM mastheads. But I fear not.
Of interest Media, Arts and Entertainment Alliance WA director Tiffany Venning offered ABC the following comment in regards to the 2020, Morrison government $50-million dollar public interest news gathering fund of which ACM benefitted $10.3m.
Ms Venning told the ABC the money was not enough and was not properly distributed.
"The thing that was somewhat problematic around that funding – and it was only $50 million for the year – was that there didn't seem to be a lot of transparency and accountability that the money was actually being spent on journalists and journalism to continue to provide those communities with news and information about themselves," she said.
Dark days might well be ahead for print media but with the continued paring back of content on their mastheads and the increase of cloned regional stories there is little hope that the current annual subscription price of $197.60 a year will attract the number of subscribers required to meet the ever increasing overheads.
Of concern, and in context, is the ACM Western Australian letter to staff justifying closures.
"ACM has had no choice but to consider options in the face of a number of challenges faced by the company and the media industry more broadly, which have been exacerbated by the 80 per cent increase to newsprint costs, which are well publicised," the letter said.
"We have identified several Western Australian mastheads that are not profitable from a revenue perspective," the letter said.
Meanwhile : Breaking news march 30th 2023
As a tradie, going to people's homes when I started in 2007, I used to see the bay post in virtually every home I went into. In the last year I've only seen it in two homes in a year! While regional reporting is important, I personally don't see the viability in regional printed media in our area. It still works in some other areas, but it's dying quicker than a VCR player and blockbuster videos . I think the money propping it up could go to more needed people.