In the past couple of weeks we have been receiving a lot of emails about our competition.
Well, kinda competition. I personally feel that all the more news coverage the better, and having multiple news outlets in a region only leads to greater confidence from locals that they know what’s going on. Competitive media usually means better media!
As the only other regional level print news outlet, the Northern Daily Leader is as close as we get to direct competition. And we have been getting a fairly steady stream of comments and letters and so on about the NDL in recent weeks, on two fronts.
The first one is how empty the paper is, a shadow of its former self with very little content. Combined with any stories they have online being behind the paywall, for many locals, the value of the once mighty regional masthead just isn’t there any more.
And there is no depth to the sympathy I feel both for readers and the NDL staff, as this significant masthead goes the way of other ACM owned mastheads in the region towards a Saturday only paper… presumably a stop on the path to becoming a ghost masthead like the Moree Champion, Inverell Times, and Glen Innes Examiner.
I don’t have any sympathy for ACM the company on their commercial operational decisions. They made their business choices and have repeatedly demonstrated they don’t have the needs of the community high in their decision matrix. Those business choices to reduce coverage and content and make people pay for it created the vacuum that we stepped into, and I won’t apologise for that.
Nor will I listen to any criticism that the increasing withdrawal of services from other media is somehow our fault. We still live in an environment where every second potential advertiser still wants a printed ad in the paper, and baulks at spending $500 with us – despite our significantly larger audience – but will still readily hand over $5,000 or more to for newspaper ads that you can only see if you buy the paper or pay to see what’s behind the paywall. Our share of the advertising buy in the region is tiny – we get by because we have significantly lower overheads, we are not significantly eroding their revenue stream (yet, anyway).
However, the second NDL issue that we are repeatedly emailed about of late – their staff member being charged with child abuse material offences – I do have considerable sympathy for. Obviously, no employer knowingly hires someone accused of such acts, and once an employee is charged, they are stuck between a very, very hard rock of employment law and and even harder place of public perception doing damage to their business.
You wouldn’t wish that on your worst enemy.
People want to know why we are not reporting on it regularly. Why the story we did back in December when he was charged didn’t have some click-bait headline screaming that the accused worked for the NDL. Why we aren’t leading with the fact that he worked in advertising sales, so was going in to many businesses and potentially near the kids of business owners as a trusted person working for a trusted local business, with legitimate reason to be there.
We don’t simply because there is no need to pile on.
(I would also normally say that the accused is innocent until proven guilty, but this particular accused had already been convicted of a similar offence.)
I’m sure they feel bad enough. I have particular sympathy for the reporters writing the story about their colleague’s court proceedings – that has to be tough. I’m sure they are rethinking every conversation they had with him, and re-evaluating many of the people and relationships in their lives. It is the natural thing for those close to the accused when this kind of crime is revealed.
We’ll battle the NDL for the best stories, best journos, and for the best share of advertising dollars – we don’t need to kick them while they’re down.
Got something on your mind? Go on then, engage. Submit your opinion piece, letter to the editor, or Quick Word now.