Loss of newspapers hurting bush communities
According to the independent Australian news site ‘Crikey’ the certain death of local news is dragging democracy down.
In an article written by media writer Christopher Warren, Crikey claims that in most of rural Australia, local news has vanished from the community – and that local democracy is being gutted as a result.
Mr Warren said that, in the bush, Australians are getting a ‘preview of what a world without newspapers might look like’.
He said that local government elections in NSW took place largely in a local news media vacuum, as the traditional regional chains owned by News Corp and Australian Community Media (ACM) shut up shop.
Not that long ago, there were eleven established daily newspapers serving each of the largest cities in regional NSW (outside the Sydney-Newcastle-Wollongong area), fortified by a host of tri-, bi- and weekly papers in smaller towns.
Now, there are just three daily newspapers, while most of the papers of a lesser frequency have been rolled into a single corporate digital offering.
In July 2024, Australian Community Media announced it would stop printing another eight of its weekly country newspapers – including the Moree Champion, The Inverell Times, the Tenterfield Star, the Glen Innes Examiner and the Country Leader.
This follows the closure of the weekly Blayney Chronicle and Oberon Review and the end of the daily print editions of Dubbo’s Daily Liberal, the Central Western Daily in Orange, and the Western Advocate at Bathurst. […]
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