<\/p>\n
Western Australia’s only regional daily newspaper, the Kalgoorlie Miner, has celebrated its 130th anniversary. (ABC Goldfields: Jarrod Lucas)<\/p>\n
Mr Vivian said the decline in regional publications and the concentration of ownership were points of concern.<\/p>\n
“Democracy and newspapers grew up together over about the past 400 years in our culture,” he said.<\/p>\n
“It worries me that there\u2019s almost only one owner of newspapers in WA \u2014 it certainly owns more than nine out of 10 of all newspapers in WA, as well as the national TV network.”<\/p>\n
Local and Independent News Association (LINA) executive director Claire Stuchbery said the decline of independent news media was about revenue streams.<\/p>\n
“We’re seeing more and more of that advertising dollar moving to the social platforms, and that loss has really impacted business models, “she said.<\/p>\n
“Similarly, we’re seeing people not necessarily wanting to pay for news.”<\/p>\n
Ms Stuchbery said smaller, independent newsrooms could look to diversify their revenue streams.<\/p>\n
“That might be in helping to organise community events, that might be in reader contributions in other formats,” she said.<\/p>\n
“So looking at a really broad array of revenue streams that are potential ways that local newsrooms can make their work more sustainable.”<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Claire Stuchberry works for LINA, a not-for-profit supporting local and independent media. (Supplied: LINA)<\/p>\n
Ms Stuchbery said news content was also increasingly syndicated from metropolitan newsrooms.<\/p>\n
She said international, national and statewide news remained important, but people needed to know what was going on where they lived and worked.\u00a0<\/p>\n
“A lot of that content is being reported from Sydney, which means that it’s further away from issues that are really valid to local communities,” Ms Stuchbery said.<\/p>\n
She said that not only affected the diversity of stories for local communities, but also the stories from the regions that could have a broader reach.<\/p>\n
History of news in the Goldfields<\/p>\n
The Goldfields’ first newspaper, the Coolgardie Miner, was published in 1894.<\/p>\n
Kalgoorlie-Boulder historian Tim Moore said there had been more than 60 mastheads in the Goldfields during the early part of the 20th century.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Tim Moore says several printing presses were sent to the region during the gold rush. (ABC Goldfields: Katrina Tap)<\/p>\n
Mr Moore said there were not only newspapers for each town, but also for each cultural group.\u00a0<\/p>\n
“There was a newspaper here out of Coolgardie called the Othersider, and that was a newspaper aimed at all the people from the eastern states who came to Kalgoorlie-Boulder and Coolgardie,” he said.<\/p>\n
“What we had at the beginning of last century to what we have now, there’s a huge gulf \u2026 print media still exists, but really it’s localised print media.”<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
The closure of the Esperance Weekender was announced in its final edition. (ABC Goldfields: Andrew Williams)<\/p>\n
Mr Moore said the decline in diverse media sources could also affect the work of historians, who may have to rely more heavily on conducting interviews to understand historic events.<\/p>\n
“It sort of makes our job only a bit more difficult because we’ve got a smaller pool of evidence on which to make conclusions,” he said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Esperance Weekender has published its final edition and joined a growing number of regional publications shutting their…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":284947,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[64,63,99,164615,6268,164614,164616,96665,164617,164613,164612,164618,45],"class_list":["post-284946","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-business","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-business","tag-esperance-weekender","tag-goldfields","tag-media-diversity","tag-news-diversity","tag-newspaper","tag-newspaper-closure","tag-print-media","tag-regional-media","tag-seven-west","tag-wa-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/284946","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=284946"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/284946\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/284947"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=284946"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=284946"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=284946"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}