No news wouldn’t be good news

Once upon a time the classified ads for jobs, cars and much else weighed down the metropolitan Saturday papers and poured ‘rivers of gold’ into the coffers of the proprietors, notably the top-end titles owned by the Fairfax and Syme empires.

Their demise at the hands of online listings such as realestate.com and carsales.com came quickly and comprehensively, and mastheads such as The Age and The Sydney Morning Herald took huge hits, now struggling to survive. Before many more years have passed they are likely to be solely digital products.

Even the mass tabloids, e.g. Sydney’s The Daily Telegraph and Melbourne’s Herald-Sun, are starting to struggle, while in most regional areas, notably northern NSW, the tabloids, free and otherwise, have vanished altogether.

On June 27, after 144 years of publishing, the Lismore-based The Northern Star printed its last edition. Gone the same week were its many sister publications, Tweed Daily News, Grafton’s Daily Examiner, Coffs Coast Advocate… the list goes on and includes popular suburban freebies such as the Ballina Advocate, Lismore Echo, Byron Shire News, Richmond River Express Examiner.

Because they were free did not mean they lacked quality, nor were not valued by their readerships.

To say that residents were disappointed by this corporate slashing is putting it mildly, outraged would be more accurate, but the Murdoch empire has never been moved by community outrage – as Kevin Rudd reminds us as he progresses his petition to parliament in an attempt to encourage a Royal Commission into the political bias and dominance of NewsCorp’s media in Australia.

So much for the bad news. On the positive front, a range of local media outlets has been consolidating their market presence, whether offered without cost to readers, as with the long-established Byron Shire Echo and its daily Echonetdaily email feed, the informative and widely distributed Nimbin Good Times, or several publications that have lined up to fill the gap left by the defunct tabloids.

Newcomers include the glossy Northern Rivers Review, owned by well-heeled Antony Catalano, former CEO of real estate online Domain.com who bought Australia Community Media from Nine for $125M. It is edited by Sophie Moeller, former editor of Murdoch’s Lismore Echo, and in keeping with the new boss’s roots, has a strong real estate focus.

The Review has a $2.00 cover price, as does the “locally owned and independent” Northern Rivers Times, a weekly that was initially free, which is more news oriented and has an ambitious Tweed-Clarence footprint. So far its page numbers are holding up well, confirming that residents miss local print coverage, although ideally more closely focused on their own LGA.

Addressing this need is the Richmond River Independent, the only paper that has directly replaced its predecessor (the Express Examiner), both geographically – based in Casino, and covering the broader Richmond Valley LGA – and with the same editor, the well regarded Susanna Freymark.

Shakier, and perhaps too quick to enter the fray, was the weekly Local Newsroom Northern Rivers, also priced at $2.00, that seemed to be disappearing at the time of writing. Liquidity was apparently a major problem. which has wider coverage than the name suggests. This online free subscription news outlet has been downloaded to 26,500 phones and tablets, and is averaging up to 60,000 views per week, according to managing director and digital content editor, Simon Mumford. Staff include an advertising rep, a sports editor and experienced journalist Liina Flynn who told us the app is aiming to be “a true alternative to the Northern Star.”

The Star, it might be noted, can be accessed behind a paywall upon subscription, as can a few others in the Murdoch stable, but content is limited. Some of its stories also run in The Daily Telegraph during the week.

Divided into a range of categories – News & Sport, Weather & Travel,

Takeaway/Home Delivery etc – the Lismore App is functional, kept updated, and has now been emulated in Orange and Port Macquarie. Furthermore, thanks to strong advertising support, it is truly free, which only a few local outlets, notably the Byron Echo and Nimbin Good Times, can match.

There is no doubt that ditching their community papers has done nothing for the Murdoch organisation’s image, and very little, one would think, for its bottom line, as most of them, especially the freebies, seemed to be doing well, albeit hit by the COVID-19 downturn.

However, out of challenge comes opportunity, and it is to the credit of local communicators and entrepreneurs that they are exploring ways of keeping the community in touch with what is happening.

Our thanks should also go out to the region’s free electronic outlets - the ABC in all its guises, the many commercial and community radio stations, and freeto-air television with its local reporters and nightly bulletins. Without them the North Coast would be less informed and culturally poorer.

Editor Robin Osborne has worked for and contributed to a range of media organisations, and is a former editor of the then-independent Lismore Echo and Northern Rivers Echo.