James Clark remained staunchly “duty-bound” to keeping the press alive, even as local newspapers shuttered around him. His was the last newspaper for 500km in outback Queensland.
But despite that devotion, the struggle to keep local journalism alive became untenable.
After 13 years of single-handedly running the Warrego Watchman out of Cunnamulla (population 1,233), Clark took an early Christmas break in 2022 that morphed into an extended gap year. Eighteen months on, he’s yet to return to his post.
Busy managing a sheep station, and burnt out by long hours required to write, edit, photograph, distribute and sell ads in the weekly paper, Clark decided to put it on hold.
“I still run into people who still think I’m printing the paper,” Clark says. “It hasn’t printed for 18 months, so they obviously weren’t reading it.”
He was fighting against a fundamental change in the way people consume news. “People have become disconnected from the world around them,” he says. “They are more interested in celebrity issues from across the water than local issues.”
“Every month a few of the oldies die off, they are the ones who read newspapers, so you lose three or four readers every month.”
It’s an existential battle played out in newsrooms across regional Australia. In April, Broken Hill’s only newspaper closed its doors after 126 years in operation. According to the Media, Entertainment and Arts Alliance, it’s one of more than 200 regional newsrooms that have either closed or ceased printing in the past decade due to sharp declines in advertising and subscriber revenue.
Clark says while there may be “a few passionate individuals who might try to keep a small newspaper going,” actually achieving that in a sustainable way is “hard to imagine”.
‘Democracy is lost’
The industry’s troubles are set to worsen, says Andrew Strayer, the president of Country Press Australia. Of the organisation’s 232 member outlets, he predicts up to 50 will no longer be viable once agreements with Facebook’s parent company under the news media bargaining code begin to expire later this year.
“Democracy in those areas [without local news] is lost,” Strayer says. “Who is going to stand up to a council decision that doesn’t meet the pub test? Who is going to shine a light on issues when people don’t have a big enough voice to get their message out?”
This void of information has laid fertile ground for mis- and disinformation to proliferate in rural communities.
“There might still be council putting out their propaganda, and people beating them up on Facebook about it, but there won’t be an impartial observer trying to nail the truth of the issue and present all sides of the argument,” Clark says.
The daily thump of a newspaper lobbed at the door was part of the rhythm of life for Douglas Bryce, a retired Queensland farmer based in Warwick. That was until the News Corp-owned Warwick Daily News stopped printing in 2020 and moved to an online-only publication, with one local reporter.
“We don’t know what’s going on any more,” Bryce says. “It’s left us feeling fruitless. For the young generations, they don’t have that connectivity to their home town that we once had.”
The local daily paper bound the town together, says Bryce. “It’s how you connected to the community, kept in touch. We lost something that made us who we are.”
News Corp, a major owner of regional media, either shuttered or moved online more than 100 local and regional outlets in 2020. “So many regional areas described it as having their soul ripped out” says Samantha Wantling, the manager of the Warwick Stanthorpe Today.
The Today is one of a few outlets still printing in the area. The other is the Town and Country Journal, which partners with Guardian Australia’s Rural Network.
In other towns, local coverage has vanished altogether. “There were instances where social services were shutting down and people weren’t aware and didn’t have the ability to mobilise and demand change,” says Prof Kristy Hess from Deakin University’s journalism school.
Hess says the rise of start-up publications is cause for some hope. Notwithstanding the likelihood of further closures once Meta deals expire, CPA membership in Queensland, New South Wales and South Australia is rising as independent publications fill the “news deserts”.
“Ultimately it’s needed, people need news,” she says.
Young journalists are still flocking to the country, too. Max Mayer, 24, left behind Brisbane for Oakey, population 4,756, to take up a post as the sole reporter for the Oakey Champion, one of five weekly papers produced by a local independent publisher.
“The paper brings a lot of joy to people,” he says. “It’s really fulfilling work.”
Lucy Waldron, 21, moved from the Sunshine Coast last year for a job at the Warwick Stanthorpe Today. She’s the only full-time print journalist in the town of more than 13,000 people.
“In a country town newsroom my days are always different,” she says. “I have always said telling people’s stories is why I do what I do.
“The newspaper is the heart of our town”.
