Hi Ray Martin and Hi Michael McCormack.

Regional Media certainly does need support. Support from local, state and federal levels of government would go a long way to ensuring we have vibrant and financial business models going forward.

But what is Save Our Voices and who does it represent? Not us.

One must ask, why is Ray Martin throwing his very polished reputation behind the Save Our Voices campaign? Who is it actually fighting for and what is it trying to save?

It certainly isn’t helping me or the paper I work for. 

  When the State government changed legislation that allowed local government to cease advertising in the local rag, there was a problem. When that same state government rarely if ever advertised in the local anyway, there was a problem. When a paper like ours continues to print during a pandemic (to its own detriment) and is treated harshly by the Federal Government there is a major problem.

   These problems become systemic of a government and a host of ministers not understanding regional media. 

We aren’t all run by ACM or Rural Press but I don’t know if Ray or Michael know that. Nor do we have millionaire and billionaire owners to rely on. Many of us are mum and dad operations. Many of us kept our doors opened and our community informed when many other much larger papers ran for the hills and will stay there until Jobkeeper runs out. We got it for a little while, now it is gone, because we worked hard.

     On November 5 the office of Deputy Prime Minister Michael McCormack released the following statement, gushing over how much money had been given to ACM or Australian Community Media. It was titled ‘MORE THAN $10.4 MILLION FLOWS TO RURAL PRESS PTY LIMITED’

It states “Rural Press Pty Limited (Australian Community Media) has been awarded more than $10.4 million under the Morrison-McCormack Government’s $50 million Public Interest News Gathering (PING) program, providing much-needed support to 91 regional media outlets at a time it is needed most. 

Deputy Prime Minister and Leader of The Nationals Michael McCormack said this was the largest grant awarded under the Program’s publishing stream, with more than 100 grant agreements now executed. 

“This money will support news gathering in regional communities, ensuring local content will continue to be written by local journalists,” the Deputy Prime Minister said. 

“Local news matters because local stories matter and as a former regional newspaper editor, I know the importance of Australian Community Media’s network of outlets – that’s why we are backing 91 of them with a more than $10 million investment. 

“This brings stability for local journalists, ensuring they can continue their important work with the certainty that their organisation’s bottom-line has been bolstered by the Federal Government. 

“The network of ACM papers delivers important public interest journalism, keeping our regional and remote communities informed and connected. 

“Today’s announcement demonstrates what The Nationals in Government can achieve for our regions.” 

This funding can support a broad range of activities including staff wages, training and technology upgrades, enabling this organisation to keep delivering important news services to their communities.”

McCormack’s release made me feel sick. He is a former Daily Advertiser Editor and should know better than most what is happening in the bush. He doesn’t.

The paper I work for received $10,000 of PING money. Quickly eaten up by wages in a downturn. It’s easy to surmise each ACM paper based on the total divided by 91, received an average of $114,285. I suppose when you work off those figures we are about $104,285 short. Some papers may have got more, some less. But it’s $10.4 million to one company.

ACMA awarded us no funding whatsoever in the middle of the year and we are a long way behind the big players like ACM. I’d like to know what Michael thinks of this and why papers that don’t even exist yet were funded by ACMA.

It’s interesting to note that even without much support from the government we took it upon ourselves to open 2 other papers during a pandemic so that our nearby communities could have a newspaper and an online presence. So that they could be informed. Another is in the pipeline. We have survived because our communities have backed us in.

I’m happy to hear from Ray or Michael at any time, I would like to hear their response. Who is saving us? We are being left to save ourselves.