Hyperlocal news outlets give communities back their voice

Every morning, once the first steaming cup of espresso is in my hands, the next thing I do is reach for my phone to catch up on the news of the day.

We live in an incredible age when news from all over the world is literally at our fingertips.

Inevitably, the top headlines each day come from the three big global stories of the era: the Trump presidency, and the wars Ukraine and Gaza.

Intermingled with world news are other stories of national and state importance.

But what about the news of our own suburb, neighbourhood or street? Where do we go to find reputable information and news about issues and events that will impact on our lives at the most basic level?

Nowhere has the decline of the traditional media business model been more keenly felt than in local news. Where once two or three free local newspapers were faithfully delivered to our letterboxes every week, over the past decade we were lucky if one paper turned up, and the mixture of soft entertainment stories and advertising content dressed up to look like journalism they contained could hardly be described as news.

And then in the first half of 2020, during the early days of the Covid nightmare, scores of newspapers around Australia owned by either Rupert Murdoch’s News Corporation or Anthony Catalano’s Australian Community Media, were shut down overnight.

Whatever was the public rationale given at the time for these closures, it was clear that the real reason was that their owners had been waiting for an opportunity to cut and run and Covid provided convenient cover.

Now no-one can blame the bean counters at News Corp’s global headquarters in New York for making rational business decisions to close loss-making local newspapers because their big shareholders see no value in small local media on the other side of the world. The impact though on the communities that those papers had served for decades was that suddenly they were left with no reliable source of local news.

Most of the attention of these cuts has been on regional and rural communities where the local newspaper was often the lifeblood of the town. However, the impact of these ‘news deserts’ has been just as profound in the suburbs of our capital cities as in country Australia.

Just like in regional Australia, local suburban newspapers were the glue that bound a community together.

These newspapers employed thousands of journalists and printers around the country. They gave many kids their first job of a paper round. More importantly, they were a voice for their community.

Whether it was shenanigans in the council chamber, planning issues, crime, sport, or just a 50th wedding anniversary, local newspapers covered their communities in both breadth and depth. They played a role in fostering grassroots democracy, they curated important debates, and they recorded history as it happened.

It was into this environment that in mid-2021 I made the decision to launch a new local news outlet in the suburb where I live, Brunswick in Melbourne’s inner north.

Brunswick had a rich history of local newspapers that ended when Murdoch’s Moreland Leader was shuttered along with dozens of other mastheads in 2020.

At first, I barely noticed the difference until a flyer turned up in my letterbox one day from the council announcing major changes to the way household rubbish would be collected.

Having worked in suburban media as a young journalist two decades ago, I knew this was the kind of story that should have been front page news. It got me thinking about what other local stories were not being told, not only about the council, but the broad spectrum of issues in a suburb as vibrant and diverse as Brunswick.

So I decided to get off my backside and do something about it and launched Brunswick Voice initially as a small blog, then a full website and later as a quarterly print publication of 5000 copies each edition.

Initially I was unsure if there was an audience for local news any longer and that perhaps Brunswick Voice was little more than an exercise in self-indulgence.

I needn’t have worried. The response from my community was instantaneously one of gratitude that not only was there an alternative of properly researched, ethical journalism to the misinformation and triviality of social media, but that there was a platform for the community to have a voice. This has been backed up by the exponential increase in the online audience of Brunswick Voice each year.

Four years later, it’s difficult to imagine what our community would be like without Brunswick Voice.

Together with members of the local community, Brunswick Voice has fought to prevent architectural heritage from being demolished, while also providing a space for advocates for higher-density housing to argue their case. We have held the council and governments to account and provided in-depth coverage of local government elections. And we have shone a light on the unsung heroes of our community, including emerging writers, artists and musicians, community volunteers and educators.

One of the most impactful stories published in the past year helped the operators of one of the few remaining affordable arts spaces in Brunswick stay open when they desperately needed to raise the cash for urgent building works or face being shut down by council building inspectors.

The story of Brunswick Voice is being replicated in communities around Australia where small hyperlocal publications are emerging to fill the gap left by the departure of legacy media.

Much as we may bemoan the fact that Australia has one of the most concentrated media industries in the world, with well over 80 per cent of the news we read, watch or hear produced by a handful of companies – News Corp, ACM, Nine, Seven West and the ABC – these hyperlocal publications offer a glimpse of a different future where media diversity can bloom.

Like Brunswick Voice, most of these new publications were launched by someone living in the community who is a passionate believer in the power of journalism to help build stronger communities. What we have in common is a belief in journalism as a public service.

Such is the momentum of this movement, that we now have our own industry organisation, the Local & Independent News Association (LINA), which at last count had 176 newsroom members.

So that’s the good news.

But here’s the rub: most of these publications, including Brunswick Voice, are one-person operations that are far from sustainable or financially viable, and without the energy, drive and hard work of their founder, they would disappear tomorrow.

My readers are constantly amazed that throughout the life of Brunswick Voice I have worked at a full-time, 40 hour a week job and produced the newspaper in my spare time. But I have never had a choice.

There still seems to be an assumption that running a news publication, even one as small as Brunswick Voice, is a licence to print money. The reality is the complete opposite. A small amount of advertising and contributions from readers helps to pay the bills but otherwise, Brunswick Voice is subsidised from my own wallet and at a rough guess, my contribution in kind is well into being a six-figure number. There is no other way it could exist.

Despite some well-intentioned initiatives in Canberra, Brunswick Voice has never received a cent of funding from any level of government – and the same is true for most other LINA members. We are simply deemed not eligible for the various schemes governments have rolled out over recent years to support legacy media, such as the News Media Bargaining Code or the News Media Assistance Program. The very same companies that shut down local news have pocketed millions of dollars from taxpayers, while the start-ups that have emerged to fill the gap have received nothing.

Through LINA, we have attempted to convince the government to recognise that media start-ups in the contemporary environment face particular challenges that require creative solutions.

We are not asking for a handout, simply a hand up to get through the early stage of development. One potential policy approach could be similar to the way the Australia Council (now known as Creative Australia) provides grants to small and independent artistic endeavours through an arms-length, peer-reviewed process.

And apart from the generosity of the Inner North Community Foundation, no philanthropic support has been forthcoming for Brunswick Voice.

This is partly due to difficulties faced by media outlets in obtaining deductible gift recipient (DGR) status so they can offer tax-deductibility for donations.

But we also seem to face barriers from philanthropic funds who see media through an old paradigm of wealthy barons using their newspapers as a tool to advance their business and ideological agendas.

The reasons for this are baffling because hyperlocal, community-run publications are the antithesis of that attitude. I would argue that the objectives of community-owned local media and of philanthropic funds – social cohesion, stronger democracy, inclusion, equality, and so on – are the same. Does the case still need to be made for the social value of local journalism? What do we need to do to convince donors of the contribution we can make to their goals?

This is all the more frustrating when we look at the long and proud history of philanthropic support of hyperlocal media in North America, where the bulk of the $US400 million raised by members of the Institute for Non-profit News since 2017 has come from large donors and philanthropic institutions.

My hope is that as philanthropy in Australia becomes more aware of the good work being done by hyperlocal community news organisations here, they will begin to invest to support the sector so it can really grow to provide a much-needed service.

Until they do, I can assure you of one thing: local news is here to stay!

Mark Phillips has more than three decades’ experience as a journalist, communicator and writer. He began his career at a small regional Victorian newspaper and has worked in suburban, metropolitan and national media, including stints at the Australian Financial Review, and in the Federal Parliamentary Press Gallery for the Herald Sun.

For the past decade-and-a-half, he has been a media advisor and communications director for trade unions and not-for-profits. Somehow, he has also squeezed in the time to write one book (Radio City: the first 30 years of 3RRR-FM), short fiction stories and start a hyperlocal news publication, Brunswick Voice. One day he will finish writing his first novel, which is currently a work in progress.

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