It was pure coincidence that a day before the announcement that a string of local newspapers would close we received the picture above. The picture ran under a headline that said:
What’s everyone reading?
It was created by Daniel Currinckx, who is the sports program coordinator at the South West Sydney Academy of Sport and was posted on their Facebook page to help promote a story we had published earlier in the week.
The picture mock up of Spiderman reading the South West Voice was later emailed to us as a thank you for our support of the academy.
Well, yes, we were chuffed, because it was such an unusual way to say thank you.
But our joy did not last long because less than 24 hours later reality was back with a vengeance with the news hundreds of journalists’ jobs would be lost when scores of local and regional newspapers would be no longer printed.
Among it were two newspapers I have a soft spot, the Liverpool Leader where I started my career in 1978, and the Macarthur Chronicle, where I was the editor between 1987 and 1993.
Soon we will also find out the fate of some other loved local newspapers, such as the Macarthur Advertiser and the Liverpool Champion, two more great newspapers I was honoured to run as the editor for more than 22 years combined.
Now owned by a mob called Australian Community Media [ACM], the old Fairfax Community Newspapers also stopped printing their local newspapers during the pandemic.
Just like News Local [formerly Cumberland Newspapers, a subsidiary of Rupert Murdoch’s Newscorp] ACM said they were standing down their journalists and closing printing operations until June 29.
Will ACM announce a return to printed local papers or will they follow News Local over the cliff and the leap into the unknown of digital publishing?
If they keep printing they will now have that field to themselves, but it’s highly unlikely.
Basically, sad as it is, the printed newspaper business model is busted beyond repair.
It was broken the moment news could be published online.
It is hugely cheaper to both publish the news digitally and at the same time much easier to access on smart phones, tablets and laptops.
The Spiderman photo and this digital publication may have been a bit of fun, but the headline – What’s everyone reading? – has become a serious question after the news of the death of print newspapers.
Part of the answer is in the graphic below, which shows how much reach the South West Voice had in the 24 hour period to this morning.
We’re a very small operation dedicated to covering local news in outer South West Sydney, and as you can see plenty of people are accessing our stories every day.
It’s certainly food for thought for both the media companies and the journos who sadly will soon be out of work.
The print suburbans that will survive will be those with gloss real estate sections that have survived in what’s now a pretty mature digital market for real estate. Everything else is toast.