ACM dailies tell readers to stay home
The 14 daily newspapers of Australian Community Media have published a single front page message imploring Australians to stay home and stop the spread of the coronavirus.
The front pages of The Canberra Times and key regional mastheads including the Newcastle Herald, Illawarra Mercury, The Border Mail, The Courier in Victoria and The Examiner in Tasmania all featured the headline ‘In your hands’ and told readers ‘for the sake of the country you love, now is the time to protect yourself and others’.
The message will be continued over the coming week across social media and on the front pages of ACM’s other 150 local newspapers.
ACM chief executive officer Allen Williams said ACM’s local news sites had a role to play to help keep readers and their families safe.
“By following the official health advice every individual Australian can be doing their bit to help slow the spread of COVID-19, which in turn helps our frontline medical staff and ultimately saves lives,” he said.
ACM is also keeping its coverage of COVID-19 free to access across its news sites in a bid to keep Australians informed. So far, sessions are up across the sites by 153% compared to the same time last year, the publisher reports.
ACM has also launched a free Open for Business portal across all websites. The portal allows businesses to indicate whether they’re still open and how customers can interact with them – via takeaways, deliveries or remote service.
The response has seen more than 2600 listings received across 70 mastheads in the first three days. The listings, updated daily, are now appearing online and in print.
ACM chief revenue officer Tony Kendall said: “We know that in a crisis, messages from our advertisers need to be delivered at short notice, so we are providing extra flexibility with booking and material deadlines to make it easier for them to reach our 7.7 million readers.”
These changes include:
• Daily mastheads supplied material deadline extended to 6pm on the day of print.
• Non-daily supplied material deadline extended to two hours prior to print
• Design resources available to help on day of print
• Every effort being made to accommodate short notice bookings. Clients are encouraged to
speak with their representatives about availability.
