Catalano strikes again…
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Why can’t ACM maintain a website and/or digital edition for each title, instead of closing them entirely? Or merge the affected titles into a region wide weekly?
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Unfortunately ACM lacks the business nous for that to work economically.
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Because they would still be paying for journalists, labour being one of the biggest business costs when revenue is not growing, but going backwards.
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I can only imagine how much the sub-metro papers in particular (both the Fairfax ones pre-ACM and the NewsLocal ones) were being held up by revenues coming from their respective real estate sections anyway, especially when classifieds started thinning out - something ACM doesn’t have.
Little wonder the Macarthur Advertiser had been only 24 pages for so long under ACM ownership (and probably lucky not to be less at times), and not a lot of that was original journalism towards the end, rather than just seemingly regurgitating press releases and such. Although there’s an argument that even that is valuable in some quarters, just not profitable really.
I’d certainly not over-estimate the loss of it in its current form, and it probably hurts less than a regional town losing theirs. Although with the NewsLocal paper having been swallowed behnd the Daily Tele paywall two years ago (and thus practically may as well not exist to many), the change is, in newspaper years, rather swift.
That South West Voice site (run by a former Advertiser editor) is certainly interesting (having read it before) and better than absolutely nothing at all, but it’s certainly not a newspaper and not much more than a one-man band. Then again, I’m not sure how many ACM would have been employing for local news for each paper towards the end anyway.
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ACM won’t kill a regional masthead yet - they’re trying to get greater government assistance to produce regional content and killing off mastheads won’t help their cause.
The sub-metro paper is probably dead as a concept now too - the writing was on the wall when News went digital on theirs.
Basically agree - they did mention on the front page blurb that said (quote) “Unfortunately, government support to protect local papers has not been extended to titles like the Advertiser” (presumably same words but substitute “Champion” for the Liverpool/Fairfield papers), which suggests that they’d be getting or at least expecting some help for regionals.
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Relaunched as it wasn’t working prior?
I believe it was previously sponcon that was produced external to ACM
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ACM selling 14 Queensland and SA papers, saying they’re out of the “key markets” of NSW, ACT, VIC and TAS
ACM’s popular agricultural flagships Queensland Country Life, the North Queensland Register and South Australia’s Stock Journal are not involved in the sale and will continue as part of ACM serving the important rural and farming audiences of those states.
ACM managing director Tony Kendall said ACM was also in early talks with another potential buyer to sell its community titles in regional Western Australia.
The titles ACM is selling in SA are: the Border Chronicle, Naracoorte Herald, Port Lincoln Times, The Islander, The Murray Valley Standard, The Recorder, The Victor Harbor Times, The Transcontinental, Whyalla News, Coastal Leader and The Flinders News. In Queensland, Star News Group will take ownership of the Beaudesert Times, the Goondiwindi Argus and the North-West Star in Mount Isa.
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ACM retaining the Redland City Bulletin? Free newspaper to over 150 000 people, quite the monopoly on Brisbane’s eastern outskirts.
A shame that the Creighton family owned Fassifern Guardian in nearby Boonah didn’t buy the Beaudesert Times.
ACM papers in NSW are running front pages saying that the lack of Government advertising will basically contribute to the demise of the papers and is calling on both sides to make a pledge similar to one that Dan Andrews made in Victoria to guarantee advertising
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I’ve lost count of the number of these campaigns ACM has run over the past few years (begging for more taxpayer dollars). At some point the message is going to start to wear very thin.
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It really borders on scaremongering too
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State election ahead of course… the proprietor more than entitled to have their say but the whole “we’ve joined dozens of other papers” things wears a bit thin when they’re being told what to say, and it isn’t entirely helping their own community either 
The other prong of their front page was to campaign to have regulations wound back that mean local governments don’t have to advertise public notices in them anymore - something done during Covid, presumably because many places stopped having a local paper when NewsLocal was wound up and put behind the metro paper paywalls.
And that’s not going to happen given… well… the News Corp physical papers are not going to come back, and ACM wound up other papers like the ones in Sydney. So they sorta made their own bed on that one…
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Now they’re running an article that the response from the Deputy Premier doesn’t specifically mention newspapers (but says the government want “a strong regional media”)
PS it’s crickets from the opposition, so far
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