The Westsider is a great example of a hidden challenge facing Australia’s news media: size and distance.
Our community newspaper services upwards of 60 suburbs across five city councils, and communities spread across over 1,200 square kilometres.
That’s a larger local audience catchment than the New York Times, on paper at least.
But even in the age of the internet, where every smart phone is its own newsagent and the issue of distributing the local paper is solved, reporters still have to get to the story to cover it.
Compared to some Aussie papers, we scribblers at The Westsider have it easy.
Mount Isa’s local paper The Northwest Star covers over half a million square kilometres of outback Queensland country, populated by just 80,000 people.
But they still read the news.
A new report by the University of Canberra and RMIT released in August found regional newspaper audiences want more local news.
It also found they were experiencing news fatigue and avoidance driven by negative reporting.
RMIT senior lecturer and report co-author Dr TJ Thompson says the project saw over 200 people interviewed in remote and regional newsrooms across every state and territory.
“It’s not that regional audiences want no bad news or no hard news,” he says. “It’s just about how the stories are told.”
“Crime is a good example. A lot of crime reporting that we’ve seen in this series of studies tends to be very episodic.”
“Over time people get a cynical understanding of their community as crime-ridden or violent, and there’s not any structural or systematic ways of reporting compared to historical trends.”
Dr Thompson says the report found regional news audiences want more stories championing local resilience, positive public figures and hyperlocal efforts to combat bigger community problems.
He says regional journalists were often more naturally connected to local communities because they were reliant on them to source photos and information across larger distances.
“We have 300 million less people in Australia than the US across roughly the same amount of land.”
“It does rely on community contributions because you can’t be everywhere, and these organisations are usually just one or two people manning the newsroom.”
The report found audiences disliked the use of stock photos, preferring local imagery, and want to be able to contribute more content and story ideas more often.
Dr Thompson says young people were also found to place a high value on local news, considering it a source of social currency within friend groups.
Raphaella Crosby is the publisher of The New England Times, a regional newspaper operating out of Armidale in New South Wales.
Ms Crosby says hyperlocal reporting equates to a large team of journalists building up knowledge and relationships over several years in order to deliver accurate context.
Building a team of newshounds to deliver quality and diverse hyperlocal news requires “money, time, and skill”.
“I don’t think it’s that publishers don’t want to do it, they just don’t have the resources for it,” Ms Crosby says.
Data released by Roy Morgan in August found 22.4 million people accessed news media on a monthly basis.
That’s 98 per cent of Australians aged over 14.
It also found 53 per cent of Australians read their news, while 91 per cent of news consumers accessed it from up to five different publishers a month.
The survey concludes “More Australians read news on a weekly basis than consume coffee, vegetables or drink milk”.
But a Reuters Institute report published in June found just 22 per cent of Australians pay for news.
In this economy? It’s hardly shocking.
Mr Thompson says federal government efforts to help fund news publications through content deals with social media platforms will hopefully help regional newsrooms expand.
“But if people aren’t willing to pay for news, that might indicate there’s not enough value being offered,” he says.
“I think the take home message of the [University of Canberra] report is journalists and news organisations need to listen to audiences more, to what they want and expect.”
The Westsider prides itself on connection to local communities in Melbourne’s west.
If you’re scrolling through our pages, we invite you to reach out to tell us why, and more importantly, to tell us what you would like to see more of.
You can get in touch via our online contact page, where you can find more information about partnering or advertising with The Westsider, and submitting a story.
*David Allen is a recent graduate from RMIT’s School of Journalism
