Digitisation is a promising solution for the long-term sustainability of the news industry, so why aren’t rural and regional mastheads jumping on board? 

It’s a question that the Australian Research Council set out to answer, and their findings have just been released. 

The Media Innovation and the Civic Future of Australia’s Country Press report, led by Deakin University, published twenty-two recommendations calling on governments to revise their advertising rules to help local news providers and better target their messages to regional and rural communities.

Project lead Professor Kristy Hess, of Deakin’s School of Communications and Creative Arts, said the project’s aim was to examine the local media landscape to identify challenges and opportunities for sustainability and innovation.

“We wanted to examine the challenges facing small-town news providers given the commentary in recent years about the crisis they are facing in Australia and across the world,” she said.

This was the first comprehensive report of its kind in Australia and its recommendations provide a blueprint to preserve and grow rural and regional news for future generations, Professor Hess said.

“The first thing we did was conduct a major national survey to find out what people valued about their local mastheads. We found people in many regional and rural towns and cities were passionate about their local mastheads but rejected an over-reliance on syndicated content, in print and digital, sourced from neighbouring areas or other parts of the country.”

The study began at the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, which resulted in the temporary or permanent closure of dozens of largely-corporate-owned local mastheads across Australia and a shift among some to digital-only platforms.

The research team conducted two main national surveys – one with local news audiences and one with those who do not engage with local news; 35 interviews with Australian news editors and proprietors; and 7 interpretive focus groups with editors, journalists and advertising managers within the Country Press Australia network.

Dr Kristy Hess was lead researcher on the National Research Council funded-project.

“Our research found there is this obsession with digital reach. That’s all well and good, but a local masthead, whether in print or online, isn’t designed to reach 1 million people. If we use the digital reach metric as an indicator as to which news outlets should get government advertising, these independent regional and rural outlets are going to lose out every time,” said Professor Hess.

When asked about a potential digital bias in the industry, President of Country Press NSW and Editor of the Gilgandra Weekly, Lucie Peart, agreed unanimously. 

“You only have to look at all the grant opportunities that come out which clearly have a bias towards digital innovation,” she said. 

“On the one hand it’s good because it’s a potential area of expansion for news businesses but it can be tricky because as we all know print is not dead and your audience isn’t online all the time, so those digital aspects are definitely just complimentary and certainly not a replacement,” said Ms Peart.   

Data from the study also showed government funding schemes for local news outlets were often tied to digital innovation, for instance to buy drones and other technologies, when what local news providers needed was financial support to upgrade print infrastructure or to hire more staff.  

“Print is not dead for many regional and rural communities. We need to remember there is a digital divide in Australia that means some communities still struggle with poor-quality and unreliable Internet connections. Some segments of the community, including older citizens, find it difficult to use newer technologies. Younger audiences also like the look of a printed newspaper,” Professor Hess said.

Government advertising needs to reach all corners

Another key finding was the  strain on local mastheads hit with lost revenue from local, state and federal government advertising, which in recent years had prioritised social media and metropolitan news outlets with a larger digital reach. 

Lead chief investigator Dr Kristy Hess acknowledged that a shift in the direction of government funding has moved towards bigger commercial players with a wide social media reach. 

“In 2021/22 the federal government spent $250million on advertising. Simply put, this money has shifted in the direction of social media, bigger commercial players or government websites at the expense of the small, local outlets,” she said. 

“This has created an uneven landscape that, unless we address, will continue to generate inequalities for small providers of place-based public interest journalism." 

In light of this finding, the report supports a recent Parliamentary Inquiry recommendation that stipulated 20 per cent of all Federal Government advertising expenditure should be directed to regional and rural news organisations.

South Australian-based newspaper proprietor Andrew Manuel is President of Country Press Australia and has welcomed the research results.

Andrew Manuel, President of Country Press Australia addressed the research launch in Melbourne last week. 

“Recurring results from four recent federal government inquiries into small and regional newspapers is that all governments should be including regional newspapers in their advertising schedules,” he said. 

“We are seeing an advertising desert from the federal government at the moment - what we want is a hand up, not a hand out.” 

Attracting journalists to the bush

The Gilgandra Weekly’s Lucie Peart says that while some digital innovation funding can be useful, there are other important prerequisites not being met in rural and regional newsrooms that need to be addressed first. 

“In the last 18 months staff shortages have been our biggest issue,” said Ms Peart. 

“You don’t want to fall too far behind in your technology innovation but some people just think that if you’ve got a website it’s all easy but you’ve still got to be able to create the content and that’s not free,” she said. 

Country Press NSW President Lucie Peart with Parkes MP Mark Coulton. The report highlights the difficulties in attracting and keeping journalists in regional media outlets.

The report therefore also recommends better incentives, including pay, to attract seasoned reporters to the regions.

Governments are also urged to provide seed funding for journalist-led news start-ups to counteract local ‘news deserts’ developing in some parts of Australia.

Mr Manuel agreed that attracting journalists and new start ups was essential to the sustainability of rural journalism. 

“Newsrooms in regional and rural areas can offer some of the most varied, fulfilling and interesting work to journalists, and it should never just be about country papers being seen as merely a stepping stone to a job elsewhere in the city,” Mr Manuel said.

“The attractions and affordability of a regional lifestyle are well known to those of us who live in regional and rural Australia, and we should never accept our way of life, or our careers as being in any way inferior or less deserving.”

Mr Manuel said Country Press Australia members would continue to innovate and adapt their businesses, and to seek ways to work together for a better media industry, but the need for more effective government support and understanding would be crucial to the long-term sustainability of country papers.

He also thanked Deakin University, RMIT and the Australian Research Council for the work that had gone into developing the report.