Extract from The Guardian
If Australians think a plurality of news voices is important, they can do something about it
Australians will be poorer when the Nine Network takes over the
177-year-old Fairfax Media company – a deal that cleared its last real
hurdle with shareholder approval on Monday.
That’s not a barb from a competitor, but the considered view of the competition watchdog that signed it off.
In something of a statement of the obvious, the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission said the $4bn takeover would shrink the major sources of Australian news from five to four – Nine, Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp, Kerry Stokes’ Seven West Media and the ABC.
But despite this, the ACCC determined the deal did not reduce competition in the market for Australian news and information sufficiently to be in breach of the law because “other players, albeit smaller, now provide some degree of competitive constraint”. The first listed “other player” was us, Guardian Australia.
Providing a new source of quality, independent Australian news has been our aim since we launched five and a half years ago. But at the moment the need for it is growing more quickly than we can.
"We’re keen to provide a good deal more than just 'some degree of competitive constraint'"
Our colleagues in the newsrooms formerly known as Fairfax, some of
the most respected journalists in the business, will continue to strive
to produce excellent journalism and their editorial independence has been promised by Nine.That’s not a barb from a competitor, but the considered view of the competition watchdog that signed it off.
In something of a statement of the obvious, the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission said the $4bn takeover would shrink the major sources of Australian news from five to four – Nine, Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp, Kerry Stokes’ Seven West Media and the ABC.
But despite this, the ACCC determined the deal did not reduce competition in the market for Australian news and information sufficiently to be in breach of the law because “other players, albeit smaller, now provide some degree of competitive constraint”. The first listed “other player” was us, Guardian Australia.
Providing a new source of quality, independent Australian news has been our aim since we launched five and a half years ago. But at the moment the need for it is growing more quickly than we can.
"We’re keen to provide a good deal more than just 'some degree of competitive constraint'"
When questioned about how he would manage “the perception of the great Fairfax independence and neutrality” the former Howard government treasurer Peter Costello, who chairs Nine and will also chair the new company, insisted Nine’s independence had been enhanced under his chairmanship and he was “probably a lot less interventionist at Nine than some of my other predecessors as chairman of Nine were”.
Considered observers remain desperately concerned about how long the Fairfax journalistic culture can survive.
And as academic Margaret Simons has pointed out, the “other players” in the news market are highly unlikely to be able to compensate for a reduction in local or regional news and there is no guarantee that, if Fairfax regional papers are sold off by Nine, they could survive on their own.
However valid these concerns prove to be, our readers – more than 4 million of them according to the last Nielsen survey – are demanding we do more, and there is so much more for us to do holding politicians and corporations to account through news and investigations, reporting on the real world impact of policies and all the issues our readers care about and feel are under-reported elsewhere.
We don’t want to get bigger to make a profit of a particular size or to sell a certain number of ads, and we don’t need to deliver a return to shareholders or to a proprietor because we don’t have either of those.
We want to get bigger for only one reason – so our journalism can have greater clout, so we can report more and be read by more Australians.
We want to make a profit, indeed we just made our first, but only in order to reinvest it in our journalism.
We want to attract advertising, absolutely we do, but advertising will never dictate what we write. Our fastest-growing source of revenue incentivises the opposite of clickbait. It is reader revenue, voluntary contributions from Australians who value us as an independent source of news and are motivated to contribute by the very best that we can do.
It’s a very different response to the same disruption that forced the Nine and Fairfax deal, the upending of the media’s business model by the big digital platforms Facebook and Google.
And as the Guardian’s editor-in-chief, Katharine Viner, announced this month the Guardian has now received financial support, through contributions or subscriptions, from more than 1 million readers around the world, while our journalism remains free and accessible to all. That figure includes 89,000 Australian readers who have supported our journalism here.
Right now Guardian Australia is dwarfed by the big four who dominate news in this country, but we’ve been growing in both reach and influence. This year, for example, our journalism has been nominated for eight Walkley Awards.
And as I wrote when the Fairfax takeover was first announced, the way things are is not how they have to be.
If Australians think a plurality of news voices is important in a society and a democracy, if they are worried that our concentration of media ownership – already among the highest in the world – just got worse, they can do something about it.
They can read and support Guardian Australia, or some of the other new online players. We’re keen to provide a good deal more than just “some degree of competitive constraint” and we think Australians are richer for having access to a diversity of news and views.
• Lenore Taylor is the editor of Guardian Australia
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