community
The Beagle celebrates the Connect Today ini'a've Celebra@ng the ever increasing number of independent news Vol 16 September 15th 2017 publishers across Australia The Beagle readers join with over 28 April December 7th, 2017 Vol 48 27th 2018
1 million other Australians every month keeping local communi@es strong, informed and connected.
Known as hyper-local, these news outlets are springing up across the na@on as communi@es look for accurate, @mely and local news that is fast disappearing from the churn being witnessed as major mastheads present cloned, out of area stories and further downsize their staff and their newsprints. Locally we have seen the once proud Moruya Examiner masthead disappear from sight without any explana@on. AKer serving the community for 150 years the popular masthead vanished overnight as ACM closed down their Batemans Bay and Narooma offices sending their already skeleton staff to work remotely due to Covid in 2020. Since then the Bay Post has reduced its edi@ons from twice weekly to just once a week on Wednesdays and has reduced its pages even further to just 16 with nearly 50% of its edi@ons being adver@sing. The once very popular Narooma News, under editor Stan Gorton, has sadly become a weekly clone of content from the Bega News and Bay Post. The many independent newspapers outside of NewsCorp and ACM are proven to be commiJed to keeping their communi@es informed , included and most importantly in a @mely fashion that presents the news as relevant. “There is nothing worse than buying a paper to read about what happened last week or last fortnight.” “I don’t buy the local paper any longer. It is adverts and rubbish and always out of date. I get the free one at the supermarket in winter to start my fire”. While independent media company ACM has launched a large-scale marke@ng campaign to “seduce adver@sers across the country” in a bid for a larger por@on of the na@onal adver@sing market the majority of hyper-locals springing up across the country have stepped in to provide local businesses with affordable adver@sing to support their own local economies. Get to know your own local independent news sources: A spokesperson for the recently launched hyper-local Connect Today campaign said that Your News – Connect Today was is an ini@a@ve that encourages the community to support simply by becoming aware of who their local independent papers were and recognising that local businesses are being promoted rather than na@onal adver@sers. “We have to remember that the budgets for many of our local businesses is very modest. They need to adver@se so that we are aware of their goods and services. Facebook ads just don’t cut it. When you see a local business advert you can see the passion behind it. The owner, their family, their employees. They are our community. They are us. This is why they are given preference in our news feeds. Without those businesses we have nothing. No goods, no services and no community”.
beagle weekly : Vol 222 August 27th 2021
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