Journal article
‘This is ridiculous – I need to start a paper…’: An exploration of aims and intentions of regional print proprietors of post-COVID start-up newspapers
Media International Australia Incorporating Culture and Policy, Vol.184(1), pp.21-34
2022
Abstract
In May 2020 at the height of Australia's first national COVID lockdown, NewsCorp Australia announced that more than 125 regional newspapers would either be closed or become available online-only. Queensland was hit hard with 22 regional and 20 community newspapers shifting to online formats, and 15 community newspapers closing. Yet within months of the NewsCorp changes, a significant number of new print newspapers were being announced to fill the 'news deserts'. Broadly welcomed by those in these local communities, the new publications suggest a reinvigoration of long-standing norms and tenets, many of which are specific to regional print news media, such as community-centred, locally-shaped news values and high reliance on 'micro-ads' (i.e. classifieds) and hyper-local business revenue. But given the dire prognostications about print business models, what are the aims and intentions of these start-ups (n = 22), and how do they translate their notions of community-centric news into business models they perceive as viable? Drawing on Hanitzsch and Vos framework for the discursive constructions of journalists' role in society, we find these newspaper start-ups both reassert and claim more vigorously the normative values associated with community journalism as 'social glue', while also developing 'lean start-up' business models that capitalise on the sense of a local newspaper's 'social good' functions through an affective rationale. We argue this represents a shift to a new 'hybrid' model, with strong elements of a traditional and still feisty monitorial news values fusing with a more 'morale-enhancing' and explicitly social cohesion-centric role conceptions. We call it a 'com-munity cohesion model'.
Details
- Title
- ‘This is ridiculous – I need to start a paper…’: An exploration of aims and intentions of regional print proprietors of post-COVID start-up newspapers
- Authors
- Renee Barnes (Author) - University of the Sunshine Coast, Queensland, School of Business and Creative IndustriesHarry Dugmore (Author) - University of the Sunshine Coast, Queensland, School of Business and Creative IndustriesPeter English (Author) - University of the Sunshine Coast, Queensland, School of Business and Creative IndustriesRosanna Natoli (Author) - University of the Sunshine Coast, Queensland, School of Business and Creative IndustriesJane Stephens (Author) - University of the Sunshine Coast, Queensland, School of Business and Creative Industries
- Publication details
- Media International Australia Incorporating Culture and Policy, Vol.184(1), pp.21-34
- Publisher
- Sage Publications Ltd.
- DOI
- 10.1177/1329878X221088047
- ISSN
- 2200-467X
- Organisation Unit
- Engage Research Lab; School of Business and Creative Industries; University of the Sunshine Coast, Queensland
- Language
- English
- Record Identifier
- 99627740702621
- Output Type
- Journal article
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