When media company NZME proposed the closure of 14 community newspapers last week, the so-called “news desert” encroached a little further into the local information landscape.
The term refers to those many regions in both town and country where newspapers that for generations have kept their citizens informed – and local politicians and planners (mostly) honest – have been shut down.
As a metaphor, the desert evokes a sense of arid emptiness and silence. But it also suggests a featureless place where we lose a sense of direction. Many of these papers were their community’s central or only source of verified local news.
Research from the United States has shown the death of a local newspaper leaves citizens struggling for information about community events, and feeling more isolated. People worry about a loss of community pride and identity. Volunteers struggle to fill the void.
As a metaphor, the desert evokes a sense of arid emptiness and silence. But it also suggests a featureless place where we lose a sense of direction. Many of these papers were their community’s central or only source of verified local news.
Research from the United States has shown the death of a local newspaper leaves citizens struggling for information about community events, and feeling more isolated. People worry about a loss of community pride and identity. Volunteers struggle to fill the void.
Among the NZME titles facing closure for being unprofitable is the Te Awamutu Courier, which has been publishing for more than a century. It and its stablemates may well soon join the 28 local papers Stuff sold or closed in 2018.
Between those two headline events many other little papers have gone, financial burdens on their owners in an age of online advertising and shifting consumption habits. Those that still exist, at least the ones owned by major news publishers, are often shadows of their former selves.
Between those two headline events many other little papers have gone, financial burdens on their owners in an age of online advertising and shifting consumption habits. Those that still exist, at least the ones owned by major news publishers, are often shadows of their former selves.
The power of a local press
The effect of this trend, of course, is to remove a kind of media town square. Affected communities are left to the perils of community social media, which are not professionally moderated, can be defamatory, and which post largely unverified content.
For all the faults that come with local newspapers – and most journalists can tell you about an editor who was too vulnerable to influence, or a publisher who meddled in the newsroom – these news organisations connect their communities to their cultural, physical and human geographies.
Good ones – and there have been many – identify the social issues that unite and divide their communities, and then represent and champion their readers or play the role of moderator.
Authorities are put on notice when local coverage amplifies the complaints and demands of residents and ratepayers. When enough pressure on politicians and officials is exerted in this way, things have even been known to change.
The papers that survive now are often the ones which reinforce a strongly-felt community identity in places as diverse as the West Coast of the South Island, Waiheke Island and Mahurangi.
Readers will rally behind a paper that gets behind them, and a collective voice of sorts emerges. A community’s struggles – be they over housing, employment or the environment – help define its identity, building knowledge and resilience.
A training ground for good journalism
In telling these stories, young journalists (many of whom are destined for metropolitan newsrooms later in their careers) learn how government is meant to work – and how it actually works in practice.
It’s where they learn how to report without fear or favour, how to find reliable sources, and where official information can be accessed – the nuts and bolts of journalism, in other words.
It’s also often where journalists first experience the powers of the bureaucracy and the executive. There’s nothing like a bully on a local board or a vindictive council official to help a young reporter up their game.
Of course, local politics are now often conveyed via social media in disordered, fragmented and incendiary ways. Politicians and other powerful players can reach voters directly, telling their own stories, effectively unchallenged.
Yet this persuasive power, and the prevalence of misinformation and disinformation, only underscore the need for political information to be ordered and moderated by accountable community journalists.
Digital solutions struggle
Newspapers do seem anomalous today, it’s true. Growing pine forests to share news is, frankly, quite ridiculous.
But online-only ventures in community news have largely struggled. Crux, a Central Otago site for robust community journalism since 2018, was proposed as a model for a network of regional news sites, but it has recently gone into hibernation.
According to its founder, journalist Peter Newport, Crux had “tried, tested and implemented every single type of digital publishing innovation”. Newport has instead taken to Substack, where freelancers can build paying newsletter audiences, to publish his brand of investigative community journalism.
With Google now threatening to stop promoting New Zealand news content if the government goes ahead with the Fair Digital News Bargaining Bill, the plight of local papers is in danger of being overshadowed by a wider crisis. Whole television news networks have closed, and others are being hugely downsized.
Elsewhere, philanthropists such as the American Journalism Project are recognising the risk to democracy and social unity from the loss of local news sources, and are funding attempts to restore it. As yet, however, a sustainable model has yet to rise.
In New Zealand, there are now calls from local councils themselves to strengthen existing government support for local-democracy reporting. This and more should be done. The longer we wait, the closer the news desert creeps every day.
Greg Treadwell, Senior Lecturer in Journalism, Auckland University of Technology This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article
4 comments:
"I need the work!"
The sole thing I took from this load of hogwash.
A local "rag" sits on my coffee table. Unread.
It will no doubt come in handy for wrapping rubbish in or similar (lighting the smoker etc.) but, unless I am completely bored it won't be read. It never is; when I want information or comment, local, national or international, I go online - as, I have no doubt 99% of my fellow New Zealanders do.
Newspapers have had their day.
Let them rest in peace.
As an aside: I'm 71years young.
The days of journalists learning on the job are well and truly gone. Now they learn at universities, being taught the correct way to think. As the author is one of those that teaches them, it is surprising he forgot. Instead, claiming we still live in the age of young budding journalists learning their trade at some provincial rag.
One could almost think he has a hidden agenda, no doubt including vast amounts of taxpayers money to be shovelled about freely.
What we see with the closing of "local news papers"- is part of the decline of New Zealand. Why do I say that, because we allowed a bigger element, example NZME to "come thru the door, cheque book in hand and buy up". So why did we allow this to happen, New Zealander's lost interest in managing a business - be it a local newspaper and/or a a business that had face to face dealings with customers.
Plus staffing - those who could have become a Journalist, showed no interest in that Trade.
We lost faith in running a business when Labour under David Lange & Roger Douglas created the Closer Economic Regulations/Act (CER) that suddenly had many Australian business landing in NZ, cheque book in hand and buying up large -to name / names -
Banks - ANZ & CBA, Westpac
Harvey Norman
Freight - Toll (who brought NZ Rail than sold it back to the NZ Govt , as they found it was not worth the money they spent.
= so who else can name business who are Australian owned.
Look at the arrival of Bunnings (Australian owned) and the gains they have made in the business they have here in NZ- and if you have missed the detail - much of their product comes from China.
The emergence of China as an Industrial Island, cheap, no union
could buy raw material, supply a developing world wide demand. I know of 2 NZ Business that moved their production lines to China - that meant the labour force was no longer. needed. End result, a business who may have advertised then, now gone.
Yes many "pump $$ into advertising", you only have to see Stuff and what appears in their papers, pages that are overpowering id data, that submerges the news into a corner - Kiwis do not want that.
But when it comes to reporting News, the question is what news, and what was the source.
The recent US Presidential Primaries showed a political bias
but never presented what was actually happening, only the salacious news on Donald Trump,. It is a pity that NZ never got to "see the real Kamala Harris".
Have you noticed that many of our Local Councils now use Social media to get data in front of ratepayers - which once upon a time, you read that in the local news paper - which disappeared long ago, when the Big Boys took over and had other news interests.
I began my journalism career at one of those 14 papers about to be shut down.
It was many, many decades ago, but I still remember the round flat keys of the Imperial 55 typewriter waiting on my desk on my first day. That typewriter was already more than four decades old at that point.
Linotype operators set type in “hot metal” which was inserted into an ancient letterpress press for printing. The paper recked of a previous century.
Old. Out of date. Slow to move with the times. It was all of those things then, and it hasn’t changed all that much since.
Except for one important difference.
Somewhere along the way that paper, and many others I worked on subsequently, lost their core ethic.
Newsrooms became infested with people who saw it as their purpose to change the world, rather than report what was happening in it.
Left-wing influences from university journalism schools began to dominate.
As competition from the internet hit revenues, head-count reductions targetted the top first. Older journos in newsroom oversight roles were cut.
Soon no-one was left to check “Is this correct?”, “Is this balanced?” or even “Has the legal risk been covered off?”
Newsrooms lost not only their balance, senior-level expertise and oversight, but also their critical thinking skills. Industrial relations, climate change, politics and now race relations — all areas where critical thinking and questioning have long since been abandoned.
Now the revenue has all but gone (remember the “classified ads” in for sale, situations vacant, and public notice categories?), the readers have too. I’ve just checked the circulation of a provincial daily I once worked on. It’s less than a quarter was what it was “back in the day”. I doubt unique daily views of its website would have gone any way to make up the difference.
What managers said as the internet influence began to bite — “There will always be a place for print” — was obviously wrong, even back then.
The shutdowns are sad, especially for those of us who once worked at these titles.
But time moves on.
Coopers and wheel-wrights were affected the same way once.
Then it was linotype operators and compositors.
Now it is journalists and editors.
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