Chewing on the Last Piece of Roo Meat

A former local newspaper editor has described the merger of Fairfax and Nine Entertainment as yet another blow for local newspapers and a media industry expert has described it as like chewing on the last piece of roo meat as we face the second invasion since 1788.

Di Sneddon who worked as a local newspaper editor for more than 25 years with the Singleton Argus, Muswellbrook Chronicle, Scone Advocate and Hunter Valley News and as a senior journalist with the Newcastle Herald said she is not surprised by the continued demise of regional newspapers.

“I honestly think that when that happened (Rural Press merger) they started to lose their connection with their lifeblood, their community audience and decisions were being made, powers taken out of the hands of local editors and decisions were being forced upon them that perhaps weren’t in the best interest of the local community,” said Ms Sneddon.

“When the Fairfax family first got into newspapers they didn’t get into it because they were going to make a million-gazillion dollars, they got into it because they realised there was a need for the community to be well informed and as a result of that being done properly income was generated and they’ve lost sight of what newspapers are there for…and it’s a concern for the long term community connectedness,” she said.

“They won’t give a rat’s-arse about what happens because there are so many mast heads doing a little bit to contribute to the big picture and they’re just too impatient, they just want to make the big bucks out of the big mast heads and I’m really concerned for those who have been patient enough to stay with the industry and being pressured and it is something I personally couldn’t do anymore because it would have been one compromise after another and I’m afraid there is going to be a hell of a lot more compromises being made,” Di Sneddon said.

Roger Colman, media and internet researcher for CCZ Statton Equities, said this latest deal still means regional newspapers will continue to struggle.

“What happens in regional Australia is Fairfax has a pain in the backside remaining that it can’t find cross media synergy gains for ACM (Australian Community Media),” said Mr Colman.

“…they will continue to struggle, continue to get cost reversals out of it, don’t forget ACM profits have only fallen by half if you take the profitability of the APN regional newspapers before they sold to News Corporation those profits fell from over $110 million to $18 million,” he said.

“That goes to show the dimension of expected profit falls in regional newspapers and ACM has well avoided that at the moment probably because there some rural publications within the ACM accounts and secondly Newcastle, Wollongong, Canberrra and Launceston make up a significant amount but even they will be significantly weaker than they have ever been,” he said.

“So this still remains a serious outlook for regional publications,” Roger Colman said.

Mr Colman also said the flagships of Fairfax would continue to decline due to the growing ethnic diversity in the capital cities eroding the proportion of English speaking press.

“In the Valley you don’t have the intercut that they have in Sydney, the readerships are now incredibly ethnically divided – Chinese and Indians don’t buy the Sydney Morning Herald or the Australian and regional Australia is still lucky it is all Australian,” he said.

“This is the second invasion of 1788 that we’ve got going on now and you’ve got to consider yourself a 1780 Aborigine and you’re surviving on the last bit of kangaroo meat out there which is ACM and meanwhile the Chinese government is supporting Chinese language press through the Sydney and Melbourne metropolitian areas,” he said.

“But they are also completely knocked out by the fact that the newspapers are too slow in terms of distribution of information; the regional density is too low the cost of distribution is significant there are isolated farmhouses and homesteads; in Sydney city you used to throw a newspaper over every fence and that would be a fifteen metres frontage, out there you throw a newspaper over and you hit a sheep, so the density of distribution is very inefficient for the old print world,” Roger Colman said.