Gazette News is a mysterious new Australian media startup led by Anna Saulwick, a former Change.org and Unicef executive and GetUp campaign manager.
Saulwick, who lists her title on LinkedIn as CEO of Gazette News as of June 2024, has brought on board former Vice head of editorial Brad Esposito as the company’s editorial director. Saulwick told Crikey that the startup is “aiming to provide high-quality free local news”, focusing on both regional and metropolitan areas “where disinformation is being targeted”.
Saulwick also said that the company, which will look to have a number of sub-mastheads in regional areas, will be “recruiting local reporting talent”, funded by a “group of philanthropists and impact investors who care about the future of news”.
However, Saulwick declined to answer Crikey’s questions about who these mysterious do-gooding investors were, or how much they had invested.
“This is in the very earliest stages, and arrangements aren’t complete, so I’m not in a position to share anything on this yet,” she said.
Likewise, where exactly the company’s new regional mastheads might be based, and how the company is choosing its locations, is also in question. Asked what exactly she meant by “where disinformation is being targeted” and whether there were areas that Gazette News saw as regional priorities of particular importance, Saulwick said there are “a few factors that make a place ripe for misinformation … we are particularly interested in communities where local news has shut down and where there are fiery local debates underway”.
Esposito told Crikey he was excited for the new publication to “meet people where they are — in the formats and on the channels they are most familiar with”. When pressed as to whether this meant an attempt at a print product, Saulwick confirmed that “in some areas the audience will prefer print, so that’s where we’ll be”.
An ASIC search revealed Gazette News is registered to an address in North Sydney.
There is no shortage of regional areas in want of local news, and even more in need of print — Australian Community Media, publisher of The Canberra Times, Newcastle Herald and Illawarra Mercury, recently shut down the Blayney Chronicle and Oberon Review in central west New South Wales, in addition to reducing circulation for mastheads in Orange, Dubbo, Bathurst and Mudgee.
In 2020, News Corp announced more than 100 of its local and regional titles would either lose their print editions or disappear entirely, with redundancies affecting several hundred staff. Many of News Corp’s formerly thriving regional titles have been reduced to outlets staffed by sole digital journalists that focus primarily on court, crime and local council, supplanted by staff in capital cities working completely remotely.
