MAJOR regional publisher, Australian Community Media (ACM), has announced a phase out of printed daily regional newspapers with just a weekend edition going to print.
ACM publishes around 65 regional mastheads including the Newcastle Morning Herald, Canberra Times, Border Mail and Wagga Daily Advertiser.
The media company has struggled in recent years to sustain a workable business model in the face of decreasing revenues and declining demand for the print product. They [ACM] have said they will retain a once weekly print edition for the daily regionals and eventually shift the weekday editions entirely digital.
Managing director, Tony Kendall was reported by the ABC as saying, “We think the long-term future of publishing is for a really strong digital subscription product during the week and a really strong Saturday publication”.
The company has said the complete phase out will happen over the next seven years.
President of Country Press – of which this publication [Tumut & Adelong Times under the banner of Riverina Media Group] is a member – Lucie Pert, told the ABC that ACM’s decision showed how the industry was changing.
“It would be a very strong indication of where we are as an industry and would really significantly show what sort of crisis that we [are] under — that our capital city would have a weekly paper,” she said.
She told the ABC printing newspapers could be expensive and moving online was cheaper.
“But there’s a whole cross section of community that still prefer a print product, and the way you consume news in print is different. Everything online is highly transactional.
“It just doesn’t have that same tangibility that a print product does.”
Locally this would mean the Border Mail and Wagga Daily Advertiser daily editions would be available by digital subscription only; something not always embraced by customers who have been reluctant to sign up for longer term subscriptions rather than ‘pay-by-paper’.
While the shift to digital media seems inevitable, many rural publications are sticking with their print editions, especially in catering for older readers.
