Victorian farmer Lloyd Polkinghorne was recovering from a brain injury when he decided to do something many would consider unthinkable.
His local paper, the Koondrook Barham Bridge Newspaper, was up for sale.
It was already struggling, growing thinner as the years passed and the digital revolution tightened its grip on media.
If a new owner was not found soon, the paper risked closing after more than a century serving its community.
Having sold his farm after his accident, Mr Polkinghorne was on the hunt for a new adventure.
“So we bought the newspaper,” he said.
Four years on, the paper has survived a tsunami of regional media closures in the wake of the pandemic.
“We’re a voice for the community,” he said.
Pandemic accelerates cuts
According to the Public Interest Journalism Initiative (PIJI), 60 regional Australia newspapers have folded since the pandemic began.
An additional 41 regional newspapers have ended their print editions, shifting to digital only.
There have also been nine newspaper mergers and 28 instances where regional papers have scaled back services.
Newspapers were closing prior to the pandemic, but in much smaller numbers.
PIJI’s data analysis, which began on January 1, 2019, shows four papers closed in the year before COVID-19 hit Australian shores.
The federal House of Representatives’ Standing Committee on Communications and the Arts chair Anne Webster said the pandemic had only accelerated the trend.
Survey into regional news access
In the wake of the findings, the Minister for Communications Paul Fletcher asked the committee to launch an inquiry into regional newspapers in late December to examine their present plight and future survival.
It has a survey open until February 11 and is encouraging regional, rural, and remote Australians to share how they access local news.
The results will be compiled into a report to be presented in parliament and Mr Fletcher.
Dr Webster said there were concerns regional paper closures were prompting more people to seek news through social media.
“While we can all gather ‘news’ — I’ll call it news loosely — on social media platforms … people sadly are relying on that as being fact, which isn’t necessarily so,” she said.
She said city publications could not fill gaps left by country newspapers.
“If there are no local newspapers then people don’t get that news,” she said.
“We’re vibrant and lively communities and we need to be able to share our good stories and our sad stories too.”
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