tag:theconversation.com,2011:/us/topics/nine-entertainment-12039/articlesNine Entertainment – The Conversation2023-06-01T08:28:50Ztag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1915032023-06-01T08:28:50Z2023-06-01T08:28:50Z‘Dismissed’: legal experts explain the judgment in the Ben Roberts-Smith defamation case<p>Today, Federal Court Justice Anthony Besanko <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2023/jun/01/ben-roberts-smith-loses-defamation-case-with-judge-saying-newspapers-established-truth-of-some-murders">handed down</a> his long-awaited judgment in the <a href="https://www.theage.com.au/national/110-days-41-witnesses-and-15-key-questions-to-answer-what-the-ben-roberts-smith-case-was-about-20230209-p5cjdp.html">defamation case</a> that Ben Roberts-Smith, Australia’s most decorated living former SAS soldier, brought against the Age, the Sydney Morning Herald and the Canberra Times.</p>
<p>The civil trial ended in July 2022 after an astonishing 110 days of evidence and legal submissions. The case was also interrupted by COVID lockdowns.</p>
<p>Besanko determined the newspapers did establish the “substantial truth” of some of the allegations, though not of others. He concluded that in light of these findings, “each proceeding must be dismissed”.</p>
<p>In his judgment, the judge said he was satisfied the most serious imputations were proven on the balance of probabilities, which is the test in such civil cases.</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/a-win-for-the-press-a-big-loss-for-ben-roberts-smith-what-does-this-judgment-tell-us-about-defamation-law-206759">A win for the press, a big loss for Ben Roberts-Smith: what does this judgment tell us about defamation law?</a>
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<p>This included allegations Roberts-Smith, in an area known as Darwan in 2012, <a href="https://www.theage.com.au/national/ben-roberts-smith-under-police-investigation-for-kicking-handcuffed-afghan-off-small-cliff-20190910-p52pys.html">kicked</a> a handcuffed prisoner over a cliff and ordered other soldiers to shoot him.</p>
<p>Justice Besanko also found the papers established substantial truth in the <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2023/may/30/the-ben-roberts-smith-allegations-war-crimes-domestic-violence-defamation-case-trial">allegations</a> that in 2009 in the village of Kakarak, Roberts-Smith carried a man with a prosthetic leg to a place outside the Whiskey 108 compound and shot him dead. </p>
<p>Further claims were made that Roberts-Smith had <a href="https://www.theage.com.au/national/ben-roberts-smith-case-live-updates-commonwealth-application-seeks-to-delay-historic-defamation-judgment-involving-former-australian-sas-soldier-20230601-p5dd37.html">forced</a> a young recruit to execute an unarmed elderly man as a form of “blooding”, which Besanko also found to be substantially true.</p>
<p>All of these allegations were particularly galling to a man who had been awarded the <a href="https://cove.army.gov.au/article/highest-honour-39-ben-roberts-smith-james-rogers">Medal of Gallantry</a> for his actions in Afghanistan in 2006, the <a href="https://www.awm.gov.au/collection/C1270259">Victoria Cross</a> for his bravery in Tizak in 2010, and a <a href="https://www.awm.gov.au/collection/C2087814">Commendation for Distinguished Services</a> for his outstanding leadership in more than 50 high-risk operations in 2012.</p>
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<h2>Substantial and contextual truth</h2>
<p>The legal battle began after a series of articles were published in the Sydney Morning Herald, the Canberra Times and the Age in 2018, alleging that Roberts-Smith, a patrol commander with the Special Air Service Regiment, was a war criminal. </p>
<p>The allegations were based upon witnesses’ accounts of events that took place in Afghanistan between 2006 and 2012. </p>
<p>The newspapers also alleged he had bullied, harassed and intimidated soldiers under his command, and that he committed an act of domestic violence in 2018. </p>
<p>Besanko also found allegations of <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2023/jun/01/ben-roberts-smith-loses-defamation-case-with-judge-saying-newspapers-established-truth-of-some-murders">bullying</a> by Roberts-Smith to be substantially true, but did not find that the newspapers had established the substantial truth of the domestic violence allegations.</p>
<p>The allegations of domestic violence and threats were held to warrant the defence of “contextual truth”. That is, given the newspapers had proved the most serious allegations were substantially true, they could rely on the defence of “contextual truth”. This meant Besanko was satisifed the domestic violence allegations would not further harm Roberts-Smith’s reputation, even though the claims weren’t proven to be substantially true.</p>
<p>The “contextual” truth changes came in a push to have uniformity in defamation laws back in 2005.</p>
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<p>According to Australian common law, a statement is defamatory if it exposes a person to hatred, contempt or ridicule, or would tend to make right-minded observers shun or avoid that person. Saying a decorated soldier is a war criminal invariably drew the papers deep into potentially defamatory territory.</p>
<p>The papers had to establish a defence, and their defence was that all of what they had reported was true. </p>
<p>Under the law, they needed only to show the “substantial” truth of what they had alleged. A defendant is thus given some leeway; they do not have to prove every last item is completely true.</p>
<p>Because the papers were able to establish the substantial truth of key aspects of the reporting, Roberts-Smith’s case failed.</p>
<p>Roberts-Smith’s lawyers, who were <a href="https://www.smh.com.au/national/stokes-funded-ben-roberts-smith-s-defence-out-of-public-company-funds-20210412-p57iia.html">funded by Seven West Media chairman Kerry Stokes</a>, claimed that some of the witnesses’ testimonies could not be relied upon. </p>
<p>In one case, the lawyers argued this was because the claims were framed in jealousy and based upon an “<a href="https://www.abc.net.au/news/2022-03-17/soldier-denies-trying-to-blacken-ben-roberts-smith-name/100917076">obsession</a>” with their leader, and in another case that witnesses were “<a href="https://www.smh.com.au/national/hero-or-psychopath-the-stark-binary-at-the-heart-of-the-ben-roberts-smith-case-20210607-p57ywa.html">fabulists</a>” and “fantasists”.</p>
<p>However, the imputations supported by the oral evidence of nearly all the witnesses were held to be reliable by Besanko.</p>
<h2>What happens next?</h2>
<p>It will now be up to the judge, in a further hearing, to determine how much the newspapers will be able to claim back from Roberts-Smith for their reasonable legal costs.</p>
<p>The newspapers requested three weeks to consider how much to seek for costs and third-party costs.</p>
<p>There’s little doubt that both sides have each spent millions on their respective legal teams. The issue of costs may prove just as interesting for observers as the defamation case itself.</p>
<p>Roberts-Smith’s barrister has already raised the possibility that <a href="https://twitter.com/Kate_McClymont/status/1664130451869663232">he will appeal</a>.</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/friday-essay-why-soldiers-commit-war-crimes-and-what-we-can-do-about-it-185391">Friday essay: why soldiers commit war crimes – and what we can do about it</a>
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<img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/191503/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Rick Sarre is an office bearer with the SA Labor Party.
</span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Ricardo Villegas does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>In his judgment, the judge said he was satisfied the most serious imputations were proven on the balance of probabilities, which is the test in such civil cases.Ricardo Villegas, Senior Lecturer of Law, University of South AustraliaRick Sarre, Emeritus Professor of Law and Criminal Justice, University of South AustraliaLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1510202020-12-06T18:55:06Z2020-12-06T18:55:06ZClosures, cuts, revival and rebirth: how COVID-19 reshaped the NZ media landscape in 2020<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/372730/original/file-20201203-21-1399mp3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=7%2C0%2C5168%2C3453&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">www.shutterstock.com</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>When Bauer Media <a href="https://www.stuff.co.nz/life-style/life/120757500/bauer-closure-spells-apocalypse-for-new-zealand-print-media-says-past-editor">announced the closure</a> of its New Zealand magazine operation just a week into level 4 lockdown in early April, things looked ominous for local media. Revenues and newsrooms were already contracting. It was hard to see things improving.</p>
<p>However, while the full picture is still unclear, it seems most of New Zealand’s TV, radio and print outlets have come through the COVID-19 crisis bruised and battered — but alive. Sadly, an estimated 637 media jobs have disappeared in the process.</p>
<p>In short, 2020 has left the New Zealand media market profoundly restructured. </p>
<p>Perhaps most significantly, as the tenth <a href="https://www.aut.ac.nz/study/study-options/communication-studies/research/journalism,-media-and-democracy-research-centre/jmad-centre-news">New Zealand Media Ownership Report</a> shows, there are now more independent news outlets in the market than at any time in the past decade. </p>
<p>That trend was underscored by Australian Nine Entertainment <a href="https://www.reuters.com/article/stuff-ma-management-idUSL4N2D60HK">selling</a> (for NZ$1) its New Zealand subsidiary Stuff to CEO Sinead Boucher. The sale returned the country’s largest digital news platform and 12 national and regional newspapers to local ownership.</p>
<h2>The magazine massacre</h2>
<p>Many of these structural changes in the country’s media might have happened anyway, but the pandemic certainly accelerated some decisions. </p>
<p>A case in point was Bauer. The company blamed its closure on “the severe economic impact of COVID-19”, but it had been facing declining advertising revenue well before the pandemic hit. This was <a href="https://www.bauermedia.com/news/press-release-publishing-new-zealand">made worse</a> when magazines were not included among essential goods and services during the lockdown in March and April. </p>
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<p>Bauer also <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/media/2020/may/06/australia-magazine-industry-in-crisis-as-bauer-media-folds-seven-titles-pacific-magazines">closed titles</a> in Australia, but in June the company’s Australasian magazines were <a href="https://www.afr.com/companies/media-and-marketing/bauer-confirms-australian-exit-with-sale-to-mercury-capital-20200617-p553ck">sold</a> to Australian private equity group Mercury Capital. The new owner resumed publication of Woman’s Day, New Zealand Woman’s Weekly, Australian Women’s Weekly NZ, Your Home & Garden, NZ Listener and Kia Ora. </p>
<p>Later, flagship current affairs titles North & South and Metro were <a href="https://www.nzherald.co.nz/business/buyers-emerge-for-metro-and-north-south-listener-still-up-in-the-air/AS6AQX3DO6MSJWHMY6ZIK6BTTA/">sold</a> to independent publishers and relaunched in November. </p>
<h2>A government lifeline</h2>
<p>You might say the country’s media survived the pandemic with a little help from friends — and even frenemies: the government, readers and Google. </p>
<p>In April, the government <a href="https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/political/414946/covid-19-government-announces-support-package-for-media-sector">announced</a> a $50 million media crisis support package — the lion’s share went to broadcasting.</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/funding-public-interest-journalism-requires-creative-solutions-a-tax-rebate-for-news-media-could-work-146563">Funding public interest journalism requires creative solutions. A tax rebate for news media could work</a>
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<p>But most of the country’s news outlets received support from the government’s wage subsidy scheme, including NZ Media and Entertainment (NZME) and Stuff, the two largest print and online news publishers. </p>
<p>Without that government support it’s clear many news outlets would have been more severely affected. The NZ Herald received $8.6 million in wage subsidy and Stuff $6.2 million. State-owned broadcaster TVNZ received $5.9 million and the private-equity-owned MediaWorks $3.6 million. </p>
<p>The scheme also kept many smaller digital news outlets afloat, and some even expanded. </p>
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<h2>The Google factor</h2>
<p>Some news outlets received additional funding from Google’s <a href="https://newsinitiative.withgoogle.com/intl/en_gb/journalism-emergency-relief-fund/">Journalism Emergency Relief Fund</a> — slightly ironic, given the impact of the digital giant on traditional media advertising revenues (hence the “frenemy” tag).</p>
<p>A total of 76 news organisations across the Pacific benefited from Google’s “short-term relief”. While smaller publishers welcomed it, the money spent per outlet was unlikely to make any serious dent in Google’s budget — it was more a gesture of goodwill. </p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/courting-the-chameleon-how-the-us-election-reveals-rupert-murdochs-political-colours-149910">Courting the chameleon: how the US election reveals Rupert Murdoch's political colours</a>
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<p>For example, Queenstown-based non-profit media outlet <a href="https://crux.org.nz/">Crux</a> received $5,000. To put that in context, in the first half of 2020 search engines — mainly Google — <a href="https://www.iab.org.nz/news/h1-q2-2020-digital-advertising-revenue-report/">received</a> $361 million in digital advertising revenue in New Zealand, along with the social media platforms gobbling up 72% of the country’s total digital advertising spend.</p>
<p>For its part, <a href="https://newzealand.googleblog.com/2020/10/reflecting-on-our-google-news.html">Google says</a> it has done more for the country’s journalism than providing financial aid, and has “trained almost 600 journalists in dozens of newsrooms across the country”. </p>
<h2>Higher traffic and increased donations</h2>
<p>News companies also got by with a little help from their readers during the pandemic. The NZ Herald <a href="https://www.nzherald.co.nz/business/nz-herald-audience-breaks-records-in-extraordinary-news-year/NCPOMHKM3KW74GEKSELJYEGF4Q/">reported</a> “overall print-digital readership […] at record levels and newspaper readership [at] its highest in almost a decade”. </p>
<p>Independent digital news outlets <a href="https://www.newsroom.co.nz/">Newsroom</a> and <a href="https://thespinoff.co.nz/">The Spinoff</a> also reported spikes in readership and donations or subscriptions. Web analytics confirm overall news site traffic increased quite substantially during the pandemic. </p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/misinformation-on-social-media-fuels-vaccine-hesitancy-a-global-study-shows-the-link-150652">Misinformation on social media fuels vaccine hesitancy: a global study shows the link</a>
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<p>According to data analysts <a href="https://www.similarweb.com/">SimilarWeb</a>, total visits to the NZ Herald website grew from 36.5 million in May to 46.4 million in August. Similarly, total visits to the Stuff site went from 39.7 million in May to 43 million in August, while The Spinoff grew from 2.4 million in May to 2.9 million in July. </p>
<p>These positive developments were offset by plenty of negatives, however. Many commercial newsrooms shrank substantially, with hundreds of jobs lost. The full effects of the pandemic will not be known for some time, and what the industry will look like in 12 months is hard to predict. </p>
<p>What is clear, though, is that more government support will be needed in the coming years if New Zealand wants a healthy media system as part of its democracy.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/151020/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Merja Myllylahti does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>The pandemic hit media hard, but a new report shows New Zealand now has more independent news outlets than at any time in the past decade.Merja Myllylahti, Co-Director, JMAD Research Centre, Auckland University of TechnologyLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1465652020-09-22T02:42:01Z2020-09-22T02:42:01ZGoogle News favours mainstream media. Even if it pays for Australian content, will local outlets fall further behind?<p>Google’s role in delivering audiences to news outlets has been under scrutiny of late. The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission’s <a href="https://www.accc.gov.au/focus-areas/digital-platforms/draft-news-media-bargaining-code">initiative</a> to redirect advertising revenue from Google and Facebook to news publishers has led to threats of a <a href="https://theconversation.com/if-facebook-really-pulls-news-from-its-australian-sites-well-have-a-much-less-compelling-product-145380">news boycott</a> by both companies. </p>
<p>Australia’s news media businesses have faced revenue loss and <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/media/2020/jun/09/news-corp-cuts-more-jobs-this-time-at-its-metropolitan-newspapers">job</a> <a href="https://www.abc.net.au/news/2020-06-30/job-losses-coronavirus-australia-covid-19/12401232">cuts</a> for some time now, blaming Google and Facebook for poaching advertising revenue. </p>
<p>But rather than share revenue with the publishers whose content they feature, it seems the tech behemoths would rather remove Australian news content from their platforms altogether. </p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/in-a-world-first-australia-plans-to-force-facebook-and-google-to-pay-for-news-but-abc-and-sbs-miss-out-143740">In a world first, Australia plans to force Facebook and Google to pay for news (but ABC and SBS miss out)</a>
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<p>Into this <a href="https://theconversation.com/googles-open-letter-is-trying-to-scare-australians-the-company-simply-doesnt-want-to-pay-for-news-144573">heated debate</a> arrives a new study of Google News search recommendations in the US. The research, <a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/s41562-020-00954-0">published today in Nature Human Behaviour</a>, examines Google News search results across more than 3,000 US counties – evaluating the balance between local and national news outlets in search results on a wide range of topics. </p>
<p>The findings show Google News generally privileges national news outlets over local ones, especially for topics of national interest. This makes it even more difficult for local outlets to compete with their larger national counterparts – but shifting the balance between the two isn’t easy.</p>
<h2>A handful of winners</h2>
<p>In one sense, the research findings merely show Google News is working as advertised: it points readers interested in major issues to leading national outlets. Larger, better-funded media businesses are likely to have more in-depth coverage than local publishers.</p>
<p>Meanwhile, Google News will feature more local content when users search for issues with a local angle. And while the study didn’t cover Australia, it probably works similarly here, too.</p>
<p>Nevertheless, the research found the three most prominent national US outlets account for about one-sixth of all search results. This echoes <a href="http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0747563218303650">research published last year</a>, which also documented Google News featuring a very narrow range of leading news outlets. </p>
<p>The authors of that study worried this “highly concentrated” set of results was “empowering a handful of prominent outlets and marginalising others”, rather than offering a comprehensive range of perspectives on the news.</p>
<h2>The ‘filter bubble’ argument</h2>
<p>The two studies mentioned above offer a powerful argument against the persistent (but unsubstantiated) idea that search engines and social media place us in “<a href="http://theconversation.com/the-myth-of-the-echo-chamber-92544">filter bubbles</a>”. </p>
<p>This is the idea that the information we encounter online depends on our personal identities, ideologies and geographical location. If the filter bubbles hypothesis were true, it would indeed threaten to deepen social divides.</p>
<p>But an increasing number of <a href="https://www.blm.de/files/pdf2/bericht-datenspende---wer-sieht-was-auf-google.pdf">timely</a> <a href="https://doi.org/10.1080/21670811.2017.1338145">studies</a> suggest something different: if there is a filter bubble, we’re all in it together. </p>
<p>In other words, when different users search for news on Google, they likely see the same results from the same handful of media outlets – regardless of who and where they are.</p>
<h2>Tweaking the results</h2>
<p>From this perspective, the uniformity and predominantly national focus of Google News results may even be welcome, as it ensures searchers of all backgrounds have access to a shared stock of information. </p>
<p>At the same time, however, Google’s channelling of users towards major national news outlets affects their local competitors’ ability to generate advertising revenue. The rich (in readership) get richer (from advertising), while outlets featured less in search results struggle.</p>
<p>In a market already suffering from substantial pandemic-induced downturns, this undermines smaller outlets’ ability to survive in the long term. “News deserts” (areas without local news outlets) are growing rapidly in the <a href="https://www.usnewsdeserts.com/">US</a> and <a href="https://anmp.piji.com.au/">in Australia</a>. </p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/local-news-sources-are-closing-across-australia-we-are-tracking-the-devastation-and-some-reasons-for-hope-139756">Local news sources are closing across Australia. We are tracking the devastation (and some reasons for hope)</a>
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<p>Policy makers might be tempted to arrest this decline by forcing Google News to provide more links to local rather than national news outlets. But even if Google agreed to this, it would come at a cost. </p>
<p>Major national outlets are prominent because local outlets simply can’t provide the same comprehensive coverage of non-local issues. Instead, they draw on wire services and syndicated content. </p>
<p>Making Google feature more content from local outlets would direct more revenue towards those news organisations, but could also reduce the quality and diversity of news provided to users. They might end up only seeing local adaptations of content from a small number of wire services.</p>
<p>While this approach might save some local news outlets, it would undermine citizens’ understanding of the world around them.</p>
<h2>The lion and the mouse</h2>
<p>The Australian initiative to make Google (and Facebook) pay for the news they show on their sites could be seen as a more sensible alternative. </p>
<p>Revenue generated from the <a href="https://www.accc.gov.au/focus-areas/digital-platforms/draft-news-media-bargaining-code">news media bargaining code</a> could be used to increase the strength and diversity of the domestic news industry, enabling smaller outlets to provide a better range of content for Google News to feature.</p>
<p>But even if Google was willing to share advertising revenue, the devil lies in the detail. If that money was distributed based on current Google News recommendation patterns, major news outlets would receive the lion’s share. Local news organisations would still miss out – along with the ABC and SBS, <a href="https://theconversation.com/in-a-world-first-australia-plans-to-force-facebook-and-google-to-pay-for-news-but-abc-and-sbs-miss-out-143740">which are not included</a> in the ACCC’s proposal. </p>
<p>So it would be good news for News Corp and Nine Entertainment, but not so much for everyone else.</p>
<p>To rebuild Australia’s local news industry, the industry heavyweights would have to give up some of their own hard-fought share of the money. But you don’t need to consult Google to work out how likely that is.</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/platform-regulation-in-australia-is-just-the-start-facebook-and-google-are-fighting-a-global-battle-145748">Platform regulation in Australia is just the start. Facebook and Google are fighting a global battle</a>
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<img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/146565/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Axel Bruns receives funding from the Australian Research Council through Discovery projects Journalism beyond the Crisis: Emerging Forms, Practices and Uses and Evaluating the Challenge of 'Fake News' and Other Malinformation, and the ARC Centre of Excellence for Automated Decision-Making and Society. He is a member of the expert research panel of the Public Interest Journalism Initiative (PIJI).</span></em></p>Research shows Google News results often prioritise mainstream media over smaller news businesses. It’s a double-edged sword. While local outlets suffer, it’s actually better for readers.Axel Bruns, Professor, Creative Industries, Queensland University of TechnologyLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1377042020-05-04T04:26:31Z2020-05-04T04:26:31ZCoronavirus redundancies are understandable, but there are alternatives<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/332201/original/file-20200504-42946-i6lpm6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=988%2C184%2C2082%2C1214&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Shutterstock</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Redundancies are attractive to organisations in crisis. Although the payouts cost money upfront, they can reshape the remaining workforce to make it leaner and more fit for purpose. </p>
<p>On the other hand they can demoralise that workforce, and they are far from good for the rest of the economy.</p>
<p>One alternative, available to the employers of as many as 6.6 million Australians for the next six months, is <a href="https://theconversation.com/that-estimate-of-6-6-million-australians-on-jobkeeper-it-tells-us-how-it-can-be-improved-137237">JobKeeper</a>.</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/quick-dirty-effective-there-was-no-time-to-make-jobkeeper-perfect-135195">Quick, dirty, effective: there was no time to make JobKeeper perfect</a>
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<p>Another is being tried with apparent success by <a href="https://www.domain.com.au/group/">Domain Group</a>, the real estate listings and journalism firm majority owned by Nine Entertainment Holdings, which also owns newspapers including The Age and The Sydney Morning Herald.</p>
<p>Domain, and the real estate industry in general, has been hard hit by plummeting listings and plateauing home prices.</p>
<h2>Project Zipline</h2>
<p>Because it is part owned by the public and listed on the Australian Securities Exchange, it has had to explain its approach to shareholders. </p>
<p>Its <a href="https://shareholders.domain.com.au/DownloadFile.axd?file=/Report/ComNews/20200427/02228319.pdf">April 26</a> announcement notes that about 45% of its cost base relates to staff and employee-related expenses.</p>
<p>“We had the option of taking the standard path of reducing hours, stand downs and redundancies, chief executive Jason Pellegrino explained on the <a href="https://www.domain.com.au/group/zipline/">Domain</a> website. </p>
<p>He chose another option: <a href="https://www.domain.com.au/group/zipline/">Project Zipline</a></p>
<blockquote>
<p>employees were offered the opportunity to participate in a share rights program whereby they could receive a percentage of their salary package over the next six months in share rights, or alternatively elect to reduce working hours</p>
</blockquote>
<p>The target is a 20% reduction in staff costs, while retaining employee talent and "momentum for the long term”.</p>
<p>It’ll also help align the employees and the organisational interests.</p>
<p>Domain’s group director for employee experience, Rosalind Tregurtha says there has been a 90% take up of the options offered. </p>
<h2>Sacrifices at the top</h2>
<p>The executive leadership and board are <a href="https://www.mckinsey.com/business-functions/organization/our-insights/how-to-beat-the-transformation-odds">role modelling</a> by taking greater proportions of their own remuneration in share rights: 30% and 50%.</p>
<p>It has had to work quickly so the savings can start from May. </p>
<p>The work has included preparing information packs for managers and employees, briefing managers, asking employees to chose options, working with <a href="https://www.linkmarketservices.com.au/corporate/home.html">Link Market Services</a> to get offers out and processing the changes for the more than 600 employees on the payroll.</p>
<p>Zipline is a case study of an organisation working quickly with its workers to find a solution that works. </p>
<p>It mightn’t work elsewhere. Other options for businesses include</p>
<ul>
<li><p>offering greater work flexibility including shortened weeks and job sharing</p></li>
<li><p>freezing or limiting recruitment</p></li>
<li><p>restricting or banning overtime </p></li>
<li><p>increasing the scope of jobs</p></li>
<li><p>allowing employees to take accrued leave</p></li>
<li><p>directing employees to take unpaid leave under the government’s <a href="https://www.fwc.gov.au/industrial-action-benchbook/payments-relating-industrial-action/standing-down-employees">stand down</a> provisions </p></li>
<li><p>seeking voluntary redundancies</p></li>
</ul>
<p>Whatever option works the best, for many employers doing nothing is not an option.</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/coronavirus-lays-bare-the-trauma-of-losing-your-job-134450">Coronavirus lays bare the trauma of losing your job</a>
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<p>It is important to consider, as Domain did, that while demand for their services might have slowed for a time, there is every likelihood that in the not too distant future things will pick up.</p>
<p>The firms that have done all they can to retain their industry knowledge and company experience will be the best placed for revival.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/137704/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Robyn Johns does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Redundancies can can leave businesses ill-placed placed for revival. The real estate listings firm Domain is trying something more promising.Robyn Johns, Senior Lecturer in Human Resource Management and Industrial Relations, University of Technology SydneyLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1163592019-05-06T03:55:20Z2019-05-06T03:55:20ZAfter a dark decade for Australia’s regional newspapers, a hopeful light flickers<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/272680/original/file-20190506-103063-fjhs7w.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Australian Community Media's mastheads include The Canberra Times, The Newcastle Herald, The Border Mail (in Albury), The Illawarra Mercury (in Wollongong), The Ballarat Courier, The Examiner (in Launceston) and the Bendigo Advertiser.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Shutterstock</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Over the past decade the profits of 160-odd regional and rural publications that make up the former Fairfax business division known as Australian Community Media (ACM) have <a href="https://thenewdaily.com.au/money/finance-news/2018/07/26/regional-newspapers-risk-nine-takeover-fairfax/">fallen steeply</a>. </p>
<p>In 2012 the division made a A$169 million profit. In 2018 it was A$67.5 million.</p>
<p>Nine Entertainment Co acquired the division with its $3 billion takeover of Fairfax Media last year. It has been keen to get rid of it <a href="https://www.smh.com.au/business/companies/nine-boss-flags-divestments-in-matter-of-months-20181209-p50l5b.html">ever since</a>. </p>
<p>There are grounds for some optimism about the long-anticipated <a href="https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-04-30/nine-sells-fairfax-community-newspapers-to-the-cat/11058066">sale</a>. It may signal better fortunes for regional publishing. But any optimism must be tempered by ongoing concerns about the viability of the local news business model. </p>
<h2>What’s in the deal?</h2>
<p>ACM’s new owner is a 50:50 partnership between real estate advertising mogul Antony Catalano and Thorney Investment Group. They are paying Nine A$125 million for the 160-odd mastheads and 130 associated websites. The deal involves Nine getting $10 million of advertising space, and content and printing sharing arrangements for a period of time.</p>
<p>Thorney Investment Group has established itself over the past 25 yeas as one of the most profitable investors in Australian property and resources. Its foray into local news may appear somewhat peripheral to its general investment profile, despite an ongoing investment in Domain, Fairfax’s real estate brand, which was listed as a separate entity on the <a href="https://www.asx.com.au/asx/share-price-research/company/DHG/details">Australian Stock Exchange</a> in 2017.</p>
<p>Catalano, on the other hand, has a long and colourful history with Fairfax’s real estate classifieds business. He is expected to chair the new company.</p>
<p>A one-time property editor at The Age, he was made redundant in 2008 and went on to found, with the backing of major real estate brokers, the free property magazine The Weekly Review. </p>
<p>The magazine took off, winning business away from The Age’s real estate pages. In 2011 Fairfax bought half of Catalano’s Metro Media Publishing business <a href="https://www.propertyobserver.com.au/forward-planning/investment-strategy/property-news-and-insights/14874-fairfax-pays-35-million-for-half-of-the-weekly-review.html">for A$35 million</a>. It bought the other half in 2015 (for <a href="https://www.domain.com.au/group/press_release/fairfax-acquires-100-interest-mmp/">A$72 million</a>). It then merged the business with Domain, putting Catalano at the helm.</p>
<p>He left his role with Domain in January last year, just two months <a href="https://mumbrella.com.au/antony-catalano-buys-nines-regional-newspapers-576941">after its successful listing</a> on the Australian Stock Exchange. Reportedly his resignation came amid complaints of a <a href="https://www.afr.com/business/media-and-marketing/antony-catalano-the-fall-of-a-party-boy-20180207-h0v13z">party-boy culture</a> in the Domain workplace.</p>
<p>Catalano’s successful bid for Domain is a particular coup. He <a href="https://mumbrella.com.au/former-domain-ceo-antony-catalano-makes-play-for-fairfax-media-552799">attempted to thwart Nine’s takeover bid</a> of Fairfax at the 11th hour by proposing to buy 19.9% of Fairfax shares. </p>
<p>Bidding against him and Thorney were private equity giants Anchorage Capital Partners and Allegro Funds. Seven West’s regional TV affiliate, Prime Media Group, and News Corp were also rumoured to have been interested.</p>
<h2>Changing priorities</h2>
<p>A few months ago Crikey labelled ACM’s impending sale a “<a href="https://www.crikey.com.au/2019/02/28/nine-regional-papers-community/">blueprint for disaster</a>” regardless of who won the bid, describing closures and consolidation of some local papers as “almost certain”.</p>
<p>Catalano, on the other hand, has talked up the potential of the larger daily regional mastheads. These include The Canberra Times, The Newcastle Herald, The Border Mail (based in Albury), The Illawarra Mercury (in Wollongong), The Ballarat Courier, The Examiner (in Launceston), and the Bendigo Advertiser. Between them, these papers reach about half ACM’s total audience of <a href="https://www.abc.net.au/radio/programs/am/how-will-antony-catalano-revive-regional-newspapers/11061236">up to eight million</a> people.</p>
<p>Catalano says he is looking to invest “<a href="https://www.illawarramercury.com.au/story/6098933/new-owner-vows-to-beef-up-mercury-after-buying-regional-newspaper-group-from-nine/">aggressively</a>” in these areas.</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/why-restoring-accuracy-will-help-journalism-win-back-credibility-116464">Why restoring accuracy will help journalism win back credibility</a>
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<p>Without offering much detail, <a href="https://www.abc.net.au/radio/programs/am/how-will-antony-catalano-revive-regional-newspapers/11061236">he has intimated</a> there were ways to monetise ACM’s audience that didn’t happen under Fairfax, due to it having “bigger priorities in the face of very significant structural decline in the newspaper business”.</p>
<p>“Under us, it’s our only priority,” he said.</p>
<p>However, when pushed on whether there would be efficiencies, including redundancies and closures, he conceded there was likely to be some “consolidation” <a href="https://www.illawarramercury.com.au/story/6098933/new-owner-vows-to-beef-up-mercury-after-buying-regional-newspaper-group-from-nine/?src=rss&utm_email=b9ee389143&utm_source=Illawarra+Mercury&utm_campaign=5ada9e8bb5-NEWSLETTER_EDITORS_PICK_DAILY&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_63532331c1-5ada9e8bb5-65999933">in print operations</a>.</p>
<p>Such consolidation might echo Fairfax’s 2017 <a href="https://mumbrella.com.au/fairfax-to-shut-six-community-newspapers-11-jobs-to-go-482887">merger of six Western Sydney suburban newspapers</a> into a single North West Magazine. </p>
<h2>The state of local journalism</h2>
<p>It would be naive to be overly hopeful about a new dawn for regional newspapers given the broader context of the Australian news industry.</p>
<p>According to the journalists’ union, the Media Entertainment and Arts Alliance, at least <a href="https://www.meaa.org/download/meaa-submission-to-public-interest-journalism-inquiry-170714/">3,000 journalism jobs</a> have been lost since mass redundancies began about seven years ago. Cutbacks, the union says, have seen “rural and regional audiences lose their "voice” and their access to local information".</p>
<p>At the regional daily with the largest readership, The Newcastle Herald, the editorial staff has been cut from about 100 to less than 24. </p>
<hr>
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<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/what-a-local-newspaper-means-to-a-regional-city-like-newcastle-116276">What a local newspaper means to a regional city like Newcastle</a>
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<p>Workloads have escalated in consequence. Veteran journalist and union rep <a href="https://www.abc.net.au/mediawatch/episodes/newcastle-herald-cuts-hit-hard/9973134">Ian Kirkwood told ABC’s Media Watch</a> that journalists, perhaps once expected to produce one or two news stories a day, were now required to produce six, including headlines and photographs. </p>
<p>The New Beats study, a <a href="http://www.newbeatsblog.com/">comprehensive longitudinal study</a> of redundancies in Australian journalism since 2012, calculates the total revenue of Australian newspapers <a href="https://ses.library.usyd.edu.au/bitstream/2123/19938/2/New%20Beats%20Submission%20to%202018%20Future%20of%20Work%20Inquiry.pdf">fell</a> from A$6.2 billion in 2007-08 to A$3 billion in 2016-17.</p>
<p>The New Beats researchers say the “market failure of regional journalism” is that local advertising is simply insufficient to make a local newspaper financially viable. How Catalano is going to change that, given his stated <a href="https://mainstreetwiththeabcspeterryan.blogspot.com/2019/05/antony-catalano-dismisses-paywalls-as.html">opposition to paywalls</a>, is an open question.</p>
<p>But given the unrelenting bad news faced by newspaper newsrooms over the past decade, it’s no surprise journalists are hoping for the best. The <a href="https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-04-30/nine-sells-fairfax-community-newspapers-to-the-cat/11058066">ABC reports</a> that sources within the Canberra Times regard the deal as the best of available options. The Media Entertainment and Arts Alliance has expressed cautious optimism, <a href="https://www.illawarramercury.com.au/story/6098933/new-owner-vows-to-beef-up-mercury-after-buying-regional-newspaper-group-from-nine/">tempered by concerns</a> investment in the larger regional mastheads will come at the expense of smaller publications.</p>
<p>Only time will tell whether it is the hopes or the fears that are the most prophetic.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/116359/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Steinar Ellingsen does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>The sale of Australian Community Media may signal better fortunes for regional publishing. But there are ongoing concerns about the viability of the local news business model.Steinar Ellingsen, Senior Lecturer in Journalism, Communication and Media, University of WollongongLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1162762019-05-03T06:11:28Z2019-05-03T06:11:28ZWhat a local newspaper means to a regional city like Newcastle<p>The Newcastle Herald has won eight Walkley awards for journalistic excellence over the past seven years. This includes a Gold Walkley for the groundbreaking reportage that led to Australia’s royal commission into institutional responses to child sex abuse. It has told stories of national and international importance.</p>
<p>But this local newspaper, serving the NSW regional city of Newcastle and the surrounding Hunter region, is not profitable enough for Nine Entertainment Co, which acquired it in the takeover of Fairfax Media last year.</p>
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<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/media-files-what-does-the-nine-fairfax-merger-mean-for-diversity-and-quality-journalism-102189">Media Files: What does the Nine Fairfax merger mean for diversity and quality journalism?</a>
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<p>Nine has offloaded it and the rest of Fairfax’s Australian Community Media (ACM) division, comprising about 160 regional news titles, 130 community-based news websites and 650 editorial staff. </p>
<p>But this is the best news the staff of the Newcastle Herald have had for a long time. There’s a cautious optimism among both staff and readers that the newspaper (which began as the Newcastle Chronicle and Hunter River District News in 1858) could undergo – like the city itself – revitalisation.</p>
<h2>Cautious optimism</h2>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/272289/original/file-20190502-103063-pwor6g.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/272289/original/file-20190502-103063-pwor6g.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=863&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/272289/original/file-20190502-103063-pwor6g.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=863&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/272289/original/file-20190502-103063-pwor6g.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=863&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/272289/original/file-20190502-103063-pwor6g.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1084&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/272289/original/file-20190502-103063-pwor6g.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1084&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/272289/original/file-20190502-103063-pwor6g.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1084&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The Newcastle Herald, Saturday December 8, 2018.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">The Newcastle Herald</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The new owner is a consortium of former Fairfax real estate supremo Antony Catalano and the Thorney Investment Group, a company that “concentrates on producing <a href="https://www.thorneyopportunities.com.au/news-announcements">absolute returns for shareholders</a> over the medium to long term”.</p>
<p>Catalano has said he plans to “grow the business, not shrink it to greatness”. He has assured Herald staff that he is about “hiring, not firing”. That’s comforting following cutbacks and two brutal rounds of redundancies in the past seven years. </p>
<p>Yet these inspiring assurances may prove hard to keep. </p>
<p>Newspapers – and journalism more generally – still face structural headwinds. Neither platform prophets nor philanthropists have found a dead-cert solution to the dried-up rivers of gold once richly fed by classified and display advertising streams. </p>
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<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/how-the-decision-to-paywall-nzs-largest-newspaper-will-affect-other-media-116152">How the decision to paywall NZ's largest newspaper will affect other media</a>
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<p>The ACM division is still profitable, but its revenue in the first half of the 2019 financial year was down 8% on the previous year (A$194.1 million, against A$212.1 million), with advertising revenue down 13% (to A$121.2 million). </p>
<p>So optimism about the benevolence of the Herald’s new owner must be cautious indeed.</p>
<h2>Benefiting the community</h2>
<figure class="align-left ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/272273/original/file-20190502-103049-1hdomjp.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=27%2C22%2C1496%2C2129&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/272273/original/file-20190502-103049-1hdomjp.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=850&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/272273/original/file-20190502-103049-1hdomjp.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=850&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/272273/original/file-20190502-103049-1hdomjp.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=850&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/272273/original/file-20190502-103049-1hdomjp.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1068&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/272273/original/file-20190502-103049-1hdomjp.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1068&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/272273/original/file-20190502-103049-1hdomjp.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1068&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">The Newcastle Herald, Monday, October 22, 2018.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">The Newcastle Herald</span></span>
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<p>But optimistic we must be. Research provides empirical evidence to support just how important a local newspaper is to a local community.</p>
<p>According to a US study published in the <a href="https://www.cjr.org/united_states_project/public-finance-local-news.php">Columbia Journalism Review</a> in 2018, local government becomes more wasteful without a local newspaper. </p>
<p>The researchers compared local government costs in counties where a newspaper had closed with demographically comparable counties still with a newspaper. It’s evidence media scrutiny is essential to governments being kept accountable.</p>
<p>Local media coverage is also associated with better informed voters and higher voter turnouts, the study’s authors suggest.</p>
<p>Good local journalism sees, knows and cares about the local community. It reflects that community’s history, present and where its future might lie. </p>
<h2>Setting the agenda</h2>
<p>This is certainly the case with the Newcastle Herald.</p>
<p>Newcastle is the nation’s second-biggest non-capital city, with a population of about 325,000; the population of the Greater Hunter Region is about 625,000. The Newcastle Herald is the only newspaper serving the region six days a week. </p>
<p>As such the newspaper plays a significant role in setting the news agenda for other local media.</p>
<p>Journalists and production staff at remaining commercial news outlets in Newcastle all operate – in the words of one senior newsroom contact – on the smell of an oily rag. Repeated savage cuts and increased networking have played their part in reducing commercial radio bulletins to rip-and-reads of the day’s Herald. Even the ABC has decreased the number of local radio bulletins it provides. </p>
<p>The Newcastle Herald clearly influences the city’s only local commercial television news bulletin (from NBN Television, owned by Nine Entertainment). </p>
<h2>Local, original stories</h2>
<p>The Herald has maintained its relevance largely because of the local, original stories it has pursued. It has done this despite its own newsroom being slashed, with a third of the journalists it had seven years ago.</p>
<p>Its much admired reporting on child sexual abuse (the Catholic diocese of Newcastle-Maitland was a hotspot of crimes and cover-ups) is just one example. </p>
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<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/review-spotlights-revealing-story-of-child-abuse-in-my-home-town-and-maybe-yours-53955">Review: Spotlight's revealing story of child abuse in my home town – and maybe yours</a>
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<p>The paper has also led the way with coverage of the <a href="https://www.theherald.com.au/story/5309813/a-catastrophe-for-some-women-pelvic-mesh-report/">medical traumas of local women</a> that propelled a <a href="https://www.aph.gov.au/Parliamentary_Business/Committees/Senate/Community_Affairs/MeshImplants">Senate inquiry</a> into pelvic mesh devices in 2017. </p>
<p>It also exposed the story of Cabbage Tree Road, a cluster of 50 cancer cases near a drain carrying toxic chemicals from the Williamtown RAAF base. The Herald’s reporting came from journalists knocking on the door of every home on the road. (The NSW Health Department <a href="https://www.theherald.com.au/stry/5229588/outcry-as-study-dismisses-williamtowns-cancer-cluster-fears/?cs=6099">has dismissed</a> there being a link.) </p>
<p>Investigative journalism is expensive to produce. No other local commercial outlet in the area has the resources to do public-interest and accountability journalism. They all rely on the Newcastle Herald to set the agenda. </p>
<p>For the good of Newcastle and dozens of other local regional and rural communities, we can only hope the Herald’s new owner can do better than its last.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/116276/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Paul Scott is a paid contributor to the Newcastle Herald</span></em></p>Being sold off is the best news the staff and readers of the Newcastle Herald have had for a long time.Paul Scott, Lecturer, School of Creative Industries, Faculty of Education and Arts, University of NewcastleLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1006672018-07-27T06:05:46Z2018-07-27T06:05:46ZAfter the Nine-Fairfax deal, who will shape Melbourne like The Age once did?<p>Stored somewhere behind the imposing glass edifice of The Age Spencer Street headquarters – keeping up appearances even as the newsroom it trumpets is progressively hacked away – is a cardboard box containing hundreds of envelopes addressed by hand to The Age Independence Committee. Tucked in with them are piles of yellowing forms clipped out of newspapers, with signatures, names and addresses – Doveton and South Yarra, Edithvale and Wheelers Hill, Castlemaine and Korumburra.</p>
<p>Cracking open this modest reliquary might provide some insight into the grief – albeit largely from a certain demographic – flowing from yesterday’s announcement of the <a href="https://theconversation.com/search/result?sg=28a33df8-57d0-41b4-9d6a-08a682818681&sp=1&sr=2&url=%2Fa-modern-tragedy-nine-fairfax-merger-a-disaster-for-quality-media-100584">passing of the House of Fairfax</a>.</p>
<p>As a young reporter, I handled a good swag of the letters in this box back in 1991 at my desk in the tiny, smoky office of The Age’s storied Insight investigations unit, which in this period moonlighted as the headquarters of The Age Independence Committee. Then The Age was situated a couple of blocks north of its present building. It occupied a brutalist chocolate-brick box in what the columnist John Lahey described as the Siberian quarter of the city, a neighbourhood of “unloved warehouses and 7am sandwich shops”, whipped by a wicked wind off what would become Docklands.</p>
<p>Under the editorship of the venerated <a href="http://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/perkin-edwin-graham-11370">Graham Perkin</a> (1966-75), The Age had been famously recognised as one of the world’s dozen great newspapers, acquiring a circulation of over 220,000. The legacy of that had endured the fraught transition of control from Melbourne’s Syme family to the Sydney-based Fairfax stable, and shaped my understanding of journalism. But by the time I gained a long-coveted desk in the ugly building in 1989 I’d missed the best of it, I was assured by old hands and readers.</p>
<p>Any time I introduced myself or sat down to do an interview I braced for the inevitable critique. People professed love for the paper in the way you might love family – with no inhibitions, indeed an enthusiasm, about highlighting flaws and disappointments. The Age had lost some of the panache of the Perkin era and some of the stylish writing nurtured by his successor, Michael Davie, opined media columnist and Melbourne son Sam Lipski in The Bulletin in 1988. That said, under Creighton Burns (my first editor) it had generally become “a steadier and more balanced paper”, he wrote. “Melbourne burghers like that.”</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/a-modern-tragedy-nine-fairfax-merger-a-disaster-for-quality-media-100584">A modern tragedy: Nine-Fairfax merger a disaster for quality media</a>
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<h2>A potent force</h2>
<p>It’s difficult to recall, from this distance, what a potent force the paper was in Melbourne and Victoria. When I try to explain this landscape to my journalism students, they retreat behind that blank, politely suffering look you give nostalgic old people. </p>
<p>In 1988, The Age published a special report titled “Who Shapes Melbourne?” It was the product of weeks of reporting by a team of ten journalists who interviewed dozens of the city’s movers and shakers – an enterprise also beyond the comprehension of my students, raised on a diet of impoverished newsroom budgets. As part of the project, 130 of these doyens were asked to rank Melbourne’s most influential individuals and institutions.</p>
<p>Out of a field of 162 men (overwhelmingly) and women, then Premier John Cain emerged as the individual with the most clout. And of 153 nominated institutions, The Age itself romped into first place ahead of the Arts Centre, the National Gallery and the University of Melbourne (tied in second place); the ACTU (third); the ABC and the Victorian Football League (this was pre-AFL) (fourth) and BHP neck-and-neck with the state cabinet/government (fifth). The tabloid Sun came in sixth, The Herald eighth, alongside the Catholic Church and the police. “Whether The Age really is the most influential institution in Melbourne matters less than the perception, among many of its powerful readers, that it is,” observed Lipski.</p>
<p>“The Age’s role is perplexing,” Phillip Adams (now ABC broadcaster, then advertising guru) told another Bulletin reporter, Jan McGuinness, in a 1989 dig into its place in the Melbourne firmament, archly headlined “A pillow of the community” and featuring a photograph of the Syme family mausoleum captioned “a palace under siege”. “The Melbourne Herald hasn’t had a role in my lifetime; the Melbourne Sun does its job, yet has no image,” Adams expanded. “But The Age is tied to Melbourne’s self-esteem. And, as there isn’t much of that left, it’s very important.”</p>
<p>Commentators may have struggled to explain the enduring gravitas of the paper, but enjoyed pricking its pomposity along the way. A special report in The Australian – “Flaws in the Fairfax formula” (April 23 1991) – listed its sins as “self-indulgence, independence, tradition, superiority”. </p>
<p>The article pokes around the cultural ethos of The Age, contrasting it with The Sydney Morning Herald. The Melbourne paper had long cut its cloth in a more “Whiggish” style, it argued, despite serving a more conservative city. It quotes an unnamed senior Fairfax staffer who had worked at both mastheads. “You’ve got to remember that at the Eureka stockade The Age supported the miners while The Sydney Morning Herald supported the police – the Herald has always been the drapers’ paper.”</p>
<p>The same article quotes a young merchant banker, one Malcolm Turnbull, verbatim and at length, arguing “there is a great deal of sanctimoniousness about journalistic independence”, and that newspapers needed to be disciplined in their exercise of independence. “Why is it that Fairfax journalists believe a proprietor can have no hand in the editorial management but a journalist can? As long as the proprietor is acting honestly and responsibly, why can he not?”</p>
<p>When this article ran, John Fairfax Holdings Ltd was in receivership and the odds were high that The Age, The Sydney Morning Herald, The Australian Financial Review and other mastheads would soon be sold. Circulation and revenue from the classified “rivers of gold” were still bountiful, the technology that would steal them still evolving out of sight. But the fortunes and vulnerabilities of the paper were being pored over thanks to “Young” Warwick Fairfax’s disastrous play to privatise the publicly listed media empire on the eve of the 1987 stockmarket crash.</p>
<h2>Maintain Your Age</h2>
<p>The Age’s <a href="http://www.abc.net.au/mediawatch/transcripts/ep23age.pdf">Charter of Editorial Independence</a> – the first document of its type in Australia – emerged when British press tycoon Robert Maxwell took a run at the paper in 1988. Age employees banded together to defend the ethos of the masthead, and generous column space was given to reports and opinion pieces explaining to readers the implications of such a sale for editorial integrity and independence. As journalists organised and fortified, mercifully they could not have known this was merely the first skirmish in a 30-year siege to which the Fairfax name suddenly succumbed with a note to the markets just two mornings ago.</p>
<p>“A newspaper cannot function effectively, cannot put the readers first, if the editor and his staff always have their ears cocked to hear what the proprietor wants,” wrote former editor Michael Davie. The newly formed independence committee reached out to readers for support, establishing a fighting fund, which bought a banner advertisement declaring: “The Age must continue to present the news honestly and without fear or favour. It must not become an organ to peddle the views of a person, a political party, or an interest group.”</p>
<p>And here’s where the letters in the cardboard box come in, a small surviving sample of pre-internet clicktivism, requiring scissors, a stamp and a trip to the mailbox. Thousands of coupons poured in over a couple of campaigns, many with encouraging notes and $5 and $10 notes and cheques attached. The operation to save The Age and its editorial culture was coordinated by Insight chief and associate editor David Wilson, the committee’s chargé de mission and hustler, lobbying powerbrokers, opinion-shapers and glitterati for their support. Like so many others in this story, Wilson is deceased, but my recollection from hours listening to him work the phones was that he rarely encountered anything but enthusiasm for the cause, even as he copped no-holds-barred commentary on all that was wrong with the paper. </p>
<p>His greatest coup – assisted by the spirited cadre he led – was getting <a href="https://www.smh.com.au/national/a-charter-for-all-ages-20120619-20m4e.html">Gough Whitlam and Malcolm Fraser to clench hands</a> under the “Maintain Your Age” banner at a rally in the Treasury Gardens in October 1991.</p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/229554/original/file-20180727-106502-hhpmsw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/229554/original/file-20180727-106502-hhpmsw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/229554/original/file-20180727-106502-hhpmsw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=406&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/229554/original/file-20180727-106502-hhpmsw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=406&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/229554/original/file-20180727-106502-hhpmsw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=406&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/229554/original/file-20180727-106502-hhpmsw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=511&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/229554/original/file-20180727-106502-hhpmsw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=511&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/229554/original/file-20180727-106502-hhpmsw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=511&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">Malcolm Fraser joined forces with Gough Whitlam to support Fairfax newspapers’ editorial independence in 1991. The Age associate editor David Wilson is on the left.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">maintainyourage.org</span></span>
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<p>But his fondest recruit was surgeon and POW Sir Edward “Weary” Dunlop, who apparently on initial approach assumed the campaign was concerned with elderly rights, but who nonetheless threw himself wholeheartedly behind The Age because that was a good cause too.</p>
<p>The paper was then facing a takeover by a consortium led by Canadian mogul Conrad Black (later jailed) and Australia’s Kerry Packer. Thousands of readers marched up Collins Street. Whitlam moved a motion calling on the Hawke Labor government to do everything possible to prevent further media concentration and foreign ownership. Fraser seconded it.</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/paul-keating-unleashes-vitriolic-attack-on-nines-takeover-of-fairfax-100604">Paul Keating unleashes vitriolic attack on Nine's takeover of Fairfax</a>
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<p>As the columnist Bob Millington had reflected in a piece rifling through the “Maintain Your Age” mailbag, “if politics makes strange bedfellows, defending a newspaper brings an even stranger, yet wonderful, collection of people together”. Over these early years the campaign enlisted support from individuals you could not imagine having any more in common than a football team (it is, after all, Melbourne). BHP chairman Sir James Balderstone, historian Professor Manning Clark, ACTU secretary Bill Kelty, Victorian Farmers Federation chief Heather Mitchell, former Victorian premiers John Cain and Sir Rupert Hamer, philanthropist and prisons campaigner Dame Phyllis Frost, Greens leader Bob Brown and RSL president Bruce Ruxton.</p>
<p>And then there were the coupon signers. Millington unearthed coupons and cheques from descendants of the Syme family and a 12-year-old boy from Brighton. Readers in Albury, Rosanna and Bentleigh declared their decades of subscription, the prize for longevity going to Mrs Florence Williams of St Kilda who “says she reads The Age from cover to cover each day. Mrs Williams will be 99 next Wednesday”. Bless her, and Millo, (both departed), but Mrs Williams represents the extreme end of a once rusted-on and apparently worthless demographic, which the enterprise has long since jettisoned.</p>
<h2>A certain hollowness</h2>
<p>The box of letters sat under my desk when we revived the independence committee a decade ago as we tried to defend the spirit of the charter from the storm of the great disruption. We wearily dusted off and enlisted the old tactics, reaching out to influencers and readers, this time using the infinitely more powerful tools of the same cybersphere that was eating us alive. The response was gratifying, but had a certain hollowness. Was it real, or just an echo?</p>
<p>As efforts crank up to defend Fairfax’s editorial tradition, if not its name, when it is consumed by Nine, I’m all too aware that the institutional journalism that defines my generation and my imagination has all but vanished. When I summon up Fairfax in talking journalism with my students, for me it’s this great warts-and-all beast with a proud history, noble ambition and organic connection to its community; for them it’s a limp tagline in their feed.</p>
<p>Fairfax CEO Greg Hywood yesterday tried to assure journalists that “there will be plenty of Fairfax Media DNA in the merged company and the board”. I hope so, because the remaining journalists and editors continue to produce stories of extraordinary calibre with little time and ever diminishing resources. But I wondered, given the vanishing of the masthead’s resonance in their lives, whether the community Fairfax served has already been lost, and might only be retrieved by extracting DNA from the coupons in the box, like extinct creatures out of amber.</p>
<p>“Where do you get your news?” I asked my students on Monday, as I do at the beginning of every semester. “Twitter” one of them replied. No, actually, you don’t.</p>
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<p><em>Jo Chandler was a journalist at The Age from 1989-2012, and a former chair of the Age Independence Committee.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/100667/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Jo Chandler has a shareholding in Fairfax Media.</span></em></p>The Age Charter of Editorial Independence – the first document of its type in Australia – first emerged in 1988. It was defended time and again over the following three decades.Jo Chandler, Lecturer, Centre for Advancing Journalism, The University of MelbourneLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1006702018-07-27T03:47:08Z2018-07-27T03:47:08ZVIDEO: Michelle Grattan on the Nine takeover of Fairfax and Super Saturday<figure>
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<p>Michelle Grattan speaks with University of Canberra’s Deputy Vice-Chancellor Nicholas Klomp about the week in politics. They discuss Nine Entertainment’s take over of Fairfax media, the issues facing Labor backbencher Emma Husar, likely outcomes for Super Saturday, and the Labor leadership tensions awaiting the by-election outcome.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/100670/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Michelle Grattan does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Michelle Grattan speaks with Nicholas Klomp about the week in politics.Michelle Grattan, Professorial Fellow, University of CanberraLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/308622014-08-26T06:25:26Z2014-08-26T06:25:26ZNine and Fairfax Media streaming towards a full tango?<p>Communications Minister and internet evangelist, Malcolm Turnbull, <a href="http://news.smh.com.au/breaking-news-national/media-must-agree-on-changes-says-turnbull-20140821-3e1rv.html">says</a> media deregulation is off the agenda for now and he’s in no rush to remove the remaining media ownership rules. </p>
<p>The reason for the delay, according to Turnbull, is the lack of consensus among Australia’s media moguls. No doubt he regrets not being in a position to create headlines that would announce ditching the final diversity safety net, which he sees as anachronistic, and not sufficiently mogul-friendly.</p>
<p>Turnbull <a href="http://www.theaustralian.com.au/media/legislation-on-backburner-as-minister-seeks-consensus/story-e6frg996-1227027394454">told</a> The Australian:</p>
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<p>“The world is not going to come to an end if ownership laws remain the same for a period, but we are a reforming government, a deregulating government. We believe that the flowering of the internet creates the opportunities for less regulation and more freedom.” </p>
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<p>This is not the kind of news that Nine Entertainment and Fairfax Media wanted to hear, given <a href="http://www.smh.com.au/business/media-and-marketing/nine-fairfax-media-close-in-on-100m-video-streaming-deal-20140822-1070s0.html">speculation</a> about their imminent A$100 million video-on-demand streaming deal. </p>
<p>After participating in a series of backroom ownership <a href="http://newsstore.fairfax.com.au/apps/viewDocument.ac;jsessionid=C41055E513431D46FBCDCF48E4F54A6D?sy=afr&pb=all_ffx&dt=selectRange&dr=1month&so=relevance&sf=text&sf=headline&rc=10&rm=200&sp=brs&cls=15869&clsPage=1&docID=SMH1403088UCLB58QAG9">discussions</a> led by Turnbull in recent months, the two traditional big media companies will now have to put any speculated upon plans to merge on the backburner. At least until such time that all the major media owners are within the same tent. </p>
<p>Until the media ownership laws can be repealed, the two out-of-three diversity rule currently prevents Fairfax Media from owning more than 15% of Nine Entertainment. As usual with this critical area of public policy, the silence is deafening, and there’s a glaring lack of public consultation on the asserted benefits of repealing these voice diversity maintaining rules - or any updated rules to replace them.</p>
<h2>Entertainment rules</h2>
<p>At the same time, in the news media industry, the line between “church” and “state” is now frequently being smudged out. Think <a href="https://theconversation.com/au/topics/native-advertising">native advertising</a> and other forms of paid-for content, which tend to not be transparent to audiences. Indeed, the quest for new sources of revenue means news media organisations are hastily pursuing alternative arrangements and searching for suitable dance partners. The well-tested “news as entertainment” model is an old favourite, and video-hungry audiences are reason enough to sidle up to a partner with the necessary content production and acquisition deal acumen. </p>
<p>As well as describing News Corp as “feudal”, former New Corp Australia CEO Kim Williams <a href="http://www.abc.net.au/lateline/content/2014/s4074306.htm">told</a> ABC’s Lateline program on Monday night that all print media organisations “need to radically reinvent themselves” to survive the downward spiral of traditional print media business models. Commercial free-to-air is in a not dissimilar place, judging by recent <a href="http://www.gizmodo.com.au/2014/08/commercial-networks-want-more-ads/">lobbying efforts</a> to increase the limit on “non-progamming matter” (better known as advertising content) to 20 minutes per hour. Again, a lack of consensus among the networks has put the brakes on that proposal, with Network Ten rather sensibly suggesting audiences might be not be so completely thrilled by the idea. But these pressures for changing business models explain the mooted Nine-Fairfax Media streaming service and potential cross-platform merger.</p>
<h2>The rise and rise of streaming TV</h2>
<p>Such developments represent a recurring global narrative about another fundamental media trend: the rise and rise of on-demand video internet protocol based businesses, as seen in local brands Quickfix, FetchTV and Foxtel’s Presto, and US brands Google Chromecast, Amazon Instant TV, Apple TV, Hulu and Netflix. </p>
<p>Netflix has announced its intention to extend its business to Australia in 2015. The new business reality of television is that internet protocol TV has emerged from the early 2000s as a competing delivery infrastructure to HD digital terrestrial, satellite, cable and mobile TV systems. There are a wide variety of subscription and pay-per-view mechanisms and strategies, that also compete with different catch-up services. </p>
<p>When Gil Scott Heron wrote the <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qGaoXAwl9kw">“Revolution will not be televised…it will be live”</a> he was critical of the apathy that mediatisation engenders: but the now decades-long expectation that television would be predominantly delivered over the internet has well and truly arrived.</p>
<h2>Let’s go, Stream Co</h2>
<p>The timing of an anticipated announcement by Nine Entertainment and Fairfax Media of a $100 million streaming joint venture to create an on-demand video service “Stream Co” is happening in the context of a series of well sign-posted video marketplace events. </p>
<p>First, Foxtel has recently halved the cost of its Presto movie streaming prices from A$19.99 to A$9.99 month amid <a href="http://mumbrella.com.au/nine-talks-numerous-business-reports-emerge-fairfax-video-streaming-jv-246611">speculation</a> it has struggled to win subscribers, and which now puts it at the same price point as Netflix and Quickflix. </p>
<p>Second, Foxtel at the same time is reported to be in advanced joint venture talks with Seven West Media (one of the media companies said to be outside Turnbull’s media deregulation tent).</p>
<p>Nine Entertainment has also made a modest <a href="http://mumbrella.com.au/nine-bought-quickflix-240907">investment</a> in its struggling competitor streaming company, Quickflix. The $1 million bought them 83 million preference shares that were previously owned by content partner HBO. This investment has the hallmarks of a strategic investment by Nine in a sector which it clearly has longer term designs on.</p>
<p>In the background, the on-again, off-again, Freeviewplus seems hobbled by limited availability technology requiring a Hybrid Broadcast Broadband TV (or HbbTV) compatible TV or PVR, and the same free streaming catch up content that’s already available on free-to-air, not premium content movies.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/30862/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Tim Dwyer receives funding from the Australian Research Council, including for a project which partners with ninemsn to research sharing news online.</span></em></p>Communications Minister and internet evangelist, Malcolm Turnbull, says media deregulation is off the agenda for now and he’s in no rush to remove the remaining media ownership rules. The reason for the…Tim Dwyer, Senior Lecturer, Department of Media and Communications, University of SydneyLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.