The letter, published on Tuesday in Launceston’s Examiner, was quickly re-shared on social media by trans-exclusionary groups, with one post viewed 74,000 times on Twitter and another shared 160 times on Facebook.
The Examiner editor Mark Westfield said he was solely responsible for the selection and placement of letters, and that he did not have time to check the claims that were made.
The Examiner published a clarification on Wednesday, stating, “unfortunately we appear to have been misled”, and that “after inquiries with the letter writer the Examiner has concerns that the letter contained incorrect information”.
In an Examiner article published on Friday, Mr Westfield is quoted as saying “as soon as it was found out the letter contained false claims it was removed from the masthead’s website”.
UPDATE 16/3: Mark Westfield quit as The Examiner editor over the controversy.
In a letter to staff, ACM said it had made the “preliminary decision” to shut down the Mandurah Mail, the Augusta-Margaret River Mail, the Bunbury Mail and the Busselton-Dunsborough Mail.
It said publishing would cease at the end of April unless a buyer was found.
Publications to change hands include paid weekly mastheads Parkes Champion-Post, Forbes Advocate, Canowindra News, The Grenfell Record, Cowra Guardian, Boorowa News and Young Witness.
The acquisition of the mastheads will grow PPG’s North East Media’s division of current 16 newspaper and magazine titles including triweekly Wangaratta Chronicle ; it follows the purchase last year of the Cooma Snowy Monaro Post and Jindabyne Summit Sun.
It did say the WA newspapers were going to go digital-only rather than being closed outright, though you’d imagine they’d still be gutted to a minimum.
It did report two Queensland newspapers have also had their final issue this week: the Jimboomba Times and the Redland City Bulletin, with the newsrooms having closed on Monday and the final issues having gone out Wednesday. Both of these are on the edge of Brisbane (Jimboomba is part of Logan City) and are pretty much suffering the same fate as the outer Sydney papers several months ago.
Most of the article the Nine press had was about ACM pushing those remaining to take annual leave over Easter (sounds like two days; they were talking about employees wanting a six-day break) and one over Anzac Day… I guess if annual leave provisions are making news, you must wonder.
If suburban papers still existed it would be one of those weeks after Easter where they combined papers with limited news (like the South-West Shopper we used to get that combined the Mac/Camden Advertiser and the Champion papers in Sydney over Christmas, when Fairfax still owned them). Not sure they get those economies of scale with regional papers…
I doubt it in terms of major papers for the Redlands district - for reference, Redland City is the council on Brisbane’s eastern and southern bayside, centred around Cleveland and Capalaba… the equivalent NewsLocal/Quest paper for those two centres used to be the Wynnum Herald (obviously folded into the Courier Mail paywall now) although looking at a 2017 Quest map, I’m not sure that was delivered to the more southern-coastal areas of the Redlands district like Victoria Point. (The Wynnum district itself is part of the eastern extremity of Brisbane City.)
I imagine there’d be some hyperlocal media there but I couldn’t tell you any, not exactly what I follow.
SEN’s acquisition strategy is increasingly bizarre.
I mean, well done to them for throwing a lifeline to these regional papers, I just don’t see how it fits into the rest of the their portfolio and question the viability of it long term.
Although there will be a Spirit station in MR soon (as per article) and I wonder whether that’s part of the reason. [621 would likely already be heard in Busselton, it’s not THAT far away.] That said, if they really wanted a proper cross media tie-up, it’s a surprise they didn’t buy the Bunbury paper too - unless Bunbury is too large a town (at >100,000) to get govt assistance for, ie. same reason ACM is dumping it.
I’ll agree though, it’s strange, and would be even stranger if not for Spirit’s presence.
The Examiner has appointed Craig Thomson as the new editor, replacing Mark Westfield. Thomson was most recently editor (Queensland and Northern Territory) for Australian Community Media.
ACM has confirmed the publication of several New South Wales titles – the Camden Haven Courier, Hawkesbury Gazette, Hunter Valley News, Mid Coast Observer and Shoalhaven & Nowra News – will cease at the end of July.
The ACM managing director, Tony Kendall, told Weekly Beast the papers would stop printing but the websites will remain live. “We are currently in discussions around redeployment for affected staff and do not envisage any job losses,” he said.
And they’re having another go - delivering a special edition of the Canberra Times to all sitting politicians at Parliament House calling for a fairer allocation of the ad budget