Death by 1000 paper cuts

This week there’s been even more than the usual sparrow-chirp of baseline chatter about the future of print media in Australia – and for good reasons.

On the North Coast of NSW two daily mastheads, The Tweed Daily News and The Coffs Coast Advocate, had their print-runs pulled by their owner, APNARM, until recently my employer.

While country papers are paid scant attention by our big-city cousins, except in the case of tragedy, even the big boys noticed. A glimpse of the future in the city?

Maybe.

The News and the Advocate won’t be the last regional newspapers to fold.

They both suffered from not changing while new competitors better understood the new readership and advertiser-market.

But the same charge can be levelled at just about every daily newspaper in Australia.

They haven’t changed; or the haven’t changed enough with the times – the times they are achanging, even if the Times has not, although the London paper has changed from broadsheet to tabloid and the Crimes is reportedly considering the same move so perhaps that isn’t a very good joke.

The Tweed Echo and the Byron Echo, all independent weeklies written by locals about locals for locals, made a huge dent into The News’ readership and advertising clients.

The Gold Coast Bully has been pushing further south at the same time, with a bigger circulation and marketing budget backed by News Ltd.

Follow that by strong, new local online publications and the country newspaper environment of monopoly that was the norm throughout the 20^th century is not so much dead as fossilised – but the attitude of newspaper-owners, managers and many editors has not really changed.

In regional papers car accidents still go on the front page as a matter of course, relegating news about actual events, despite there being very little to evidence that it actually helps casual sales.

Stories are still manufactured to suit a point of view, rather letting the subject unfold as it naturally might, for a perceived readership that is no longer there.

Campaign journalism is still trumpeted as if people are lining up to be told what to think by their daily newspaper.

And yet while the readers have spoken with their $1.50 and stopped buying their daily rag in droves, still antiquated attitudes to publishing news remain.

Cheaper, simpler, dumber is better. If it can’t be said in 200 words it shouldn’t be said at all.

The Tweed Echo is edited by a friend of mine, Luis Feliu, who was the senior reporter for the first year of my editorship at The Northern Rivers Echo, in the final days of its (I’m finally getting used to not saying ‘our’) independence. His gracious analysis of The News’ folding is here: http://www.tweedecho.com.au/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=3119&Itemid=543

He treats his readers with intelligence. He gives them the facts and lets them decide. He writes detailed, intelligent editorials and has a team of excellent reporters and a strong, experienced independent publisher.

They don’t dumb things down. They go to local events. They know their readership.

I’m not as familiar with the situation in Coffs but I do know a little about their online publication, Coffs Outlook, http://coffsoutlook.com/?page_id=2 as I spoke with its founder, disgruntled journalist Hugh Saddleton. Hugh began the website because, as he puts it:

“It is quite clear that there is a dearth of investigative reporting. Many things are left unsaid for fear of losing the advertising dollar, resulting in a gently sanitised series of publications.”

He thought there might be some equally local-knowledge thirsty locals and he was right.

The Byron Echo recently launched a new daily website and it looks like one of the best news websites around.

Modern, diverse and topical, it’s managed to hang on to the Byron Echo ethos and feel while adding video grabs from locals and reporters on everything from politics to humour to the surf. And, from a taste of their recent copy, it’s expanding.

When the Byron and Northern Rivers Echoes were truly sister papers, with two separate but independent owners’ groups, we had a gentle-person’s agreement about territory. We didn’t fuck with theirs and they didn’t give a fuck about ours. In case that was ever in doubt there were loose boundaries based on council borders, us Lismore and Richmond Valley, them Byron and Ballina a kind of grey area. They always wanted Rosebank but were nice enough to not intrude.

Now, it’s a different Frisbee game entirely.

Experienced reporter Chris Dobney, Echonet Daily’s editor, has a wider remit and has filed pieces on Lismore events and went to Lismore City Council’s November meeting. Definitely a former no-go zone but absolutely within the new publication’s right and a smart move. Seems like they have a smart strategy of toe by toe to expand their footprint – and that’s what a good innovative publisher does. Gets more readers by using their judgement about what people want to read.

Echonet Daily is well-placed to fill some of the gap that will be left by The Tweed Daily News for those who don’t want their information delivered by the Murdoch stable.

It’s the journalists for both The News and The Advocate for whom I feel an immense amount of sympathy.

Making a living as a journalist in the country isn’t an easy gig but it’s one that many of us love dearly – and it just got a hell of a lot harder for the 36 journos who no longer have a masthead.

They did the hard slog: the car-accidents, the tragic deaths, the long meetings at Council, the interminable awards nights that stretched on longer than a Kubrick movie and were even more painful and boring; and they also did the fun stuff: the young people enthusiastically spruiking their environmental initiative; the chats with favourite musos who were doing one side gig on their way to somewhere bigger; the interviews with pollies who actually said something because they thought country journos were too dumb to understand; the community events where people pull together and the better side of human nature is revealed… and all sorts of weird and wonderful tales in between and they wrote about it all so people – some, at least - would read the stories of the area.

That’s the nature of writing news in the country: it runs a much broader canvas than that of our smug big-city cousins who would sneer at us for covering chook shows, without understanding that, if it mattered to one person then, if you’re a decent journo, you can write a good story about it.

I am sad to see two mastheads no longer printing. The region will be poorer for it. 

Ticking all the boxes

Former ABC journalist Madonna King told Crikey when hosing down speculation about a political future that: "Indeed, because I'm a working journalist, I don't even vote."

Well I, too, am a journalist and I live in the northern NSW state electorate of Clarence, where there’s a by-election this Saturday and I will definitely be making the trip to the ballot box at Coraki Primary School this weekend.

In my career as a newspaper journalist I’ve worked in a fairly broad variety of roles from the small end of the print run, for an independent newspaper based in country NSW, to the larger end, for the national newspaper and all sorts of interesting roles in between. I’ve worked under some really great editors and section editors, all of whom have been professional and ethical. I’ve worked with dozens of committed, clever, experienced and interesting journos and I’ve been a party to some pretty heated conversations about the nature of journalism, ethics and our role in society.

Not once have I ever heard a working journalist say they thought our profession should rule us out of having our democratic say at the ballot box.

The more I think about it, the more ridiculous that statement becomes.

To see if I was on my lonesome I put King’s quote on my facebook page, where I sporadically keep in contact with many of my journalistic colleagues. One abc journo suggested King must have been joking, alluding to the rigours and strictures of the abc’s policy on comment and bias. I can’t rule out that possibility but the context of the quote makes it unlikely:

"I'd never join any political party, and never run for a political party. It's much more fun reporting on them. Indeed, because I'm a working journalist, I don't even vote."

I couldn’t agree more with King’s first two sentences but her third?

It’s ridiculous. What about sports journos? We've heard biased sports commentating but should they vote? How about sub-editors? Fashion writers?

The six comments under the brief piece on Crikey all expressed differing levels of dismay (and one, also, the possibility that King may have been joking).

Compulsory voting is an extremely important facet of Australian democracy and those of us who report on politics are not exempted from participation. We are journalists but we’re also citizens – and we’re no different to people of any other profession or to those with no profession at all in regards to our obligation to our society.

And that includes voting.

One of the (many) aspects of journalism that really gets me shaking newspaper pages and lecturing to the written word (and, yes, I do realise that does about as much good as shouting at the television) is the frequently inflated sense of importance. It leads to false assumptions and bad writing.

Just because we comment on events it doesn’t make our opinions more important than anyone else’s. It’s a privilege to have the access to people that we do – and a crying shame that media management is so pervasive that many are too coached to say anything meaningful on the record any more – and it’s our job to distill what we learn to others.

It’s a great job and I love it. I reported on the reasons for the Clarence by-election, with the Nationals’ Steve Cansdell resigning after he admitted to falsifying a statutory declaration to save his driver’s licence (pity about his career). http://www.echonews.com.au/story/2011/09/22/cansdell-quits-more-allegations-surface/

I've even been attempting to profit off the by-election by pitching on-the-ground pieces to Sydney-based newspapers, although with no luck so far.

But I’d have to be strapped down with my computer cables and phone cords to my desk chair before I’d let that stop me walking through the aisle of Christian Democrats, Nationals, Country Labor, Greens and Democrats supporters so I can participate in our democracy.