Election coverage, commercial models, Bargaining Code, privacy challenges and embracing TikTok: Wrapping 2022 in news media

It has been a big year for Australia’s news industry, with rate hikes, a federal election, and two state elections, and hesitation as the pandemic has tentatively been put in the rear-view mirror.

This week’s Mumbrellacast gives a wrap of the biggest talking points in news media in 2022. Here’s a highlight of a couple of the topics the panel touched on/.

Commercial models in 2022

More than half of Guardian Australia’s revenue comes from its readers now, managing director Dan Stinton says, “which has genuinely transformed the prospects for our whole industry”.

Guardian Australia is committed to leaving its journalism “open and available to all” says Stinton, “not just those that can afford to read it, but the motivations of people that do is because they want support our journalism, but they also want to buy into that mission of making sure that our journalism is available to all.”

“The other side of this is, as a result advertising is still a very important part of our business, and we are still very bullish about its prospects going forward. So you balance both, but reader revenue is more than half now and growing pretty strongly.”

News Corp also hit the one million digital subscribers mark recently across its main titles, pushing a strategy of exclusive and original stories, creating journalism “people are prepared to pay for”, says the national executive editor of News Corp, Peter Blunden.

The consequence of new subscription-based commercial models from Australia’s two largest media players, Nine and News Corp means that it’s increasingly difficult for a newswire such as AAP to service those businesses that position themselves on exclusive content.

“The basic premise of AAP is and always has been that we provide wholesale news and we provide that baseline coverage, allowing every other outlet to add their point of difference on top,” says CEO of the newswire, Lisa Davies.

AAP’s Lisa Davies

“I don’t think it has changed terribly much. I think the clients of ours that are using AAP the best are the ones who are really engaging with our content, they are using our agenda service which is the national diary, and our planning tool to allocate the resources accordingly.”

“Other than News Corp and The Guardian, perhaps most newsrooms are shrinking or at least stabilising. So the resources are getting tight or continue to be tight, or they have always been tight. So where people can, when running a newsroom they can allocate those resources and rely on us.”

The bargaining code ‘turbo-charging’ news investment – and what if Facebook pulls news?

Davies says the media industry has turned into a bit of a “haves and have nots” in regards to those with deals with the likes of Meta and Google.

“There are those people who get a lot of money from the digital platforms and then there are those who don’t. And I think we do have a media diversity problem, which of course speaking from my perspective is an issue that AAP tries to really to help solve by supporting all those outlets that don’t have access to those big dollars.”

While Stinton acknowledges not all outlets have secured deals with the likes of Google and Meta, he says the News Media Bargaining Code deals has “effectively allowed us to bring forward investment we would’ve made in subsequent years”.

Stinton says his company’s relationship with Google and Meta has ‘never been better’

“We were already growing, we were already going well, but we basically brought forward about three years worth of investment into one year and turbocharged the expansion of our newsroom, and that’s had tremendous commercial benefits as well.”

Blunden adds “journalism can be a pretty expensive business, and we’ve always believed, and I think rightfully so, that people should be helping pay those salaries”.

“I think those deals have enabled us to invest more in journalism. We hired 30 new cadets after that deal was done and that’s been a great investment.”

With reports Facebook may move away from news, Stinton says for now the relationships with it and Google have “never been better”.

He adds though: “It is quite clear that Facebook in particular is going in a direction which is more towards creators and away from professionally produced content. They have said that publicly. That’s a concern. We’ll just have to wait and see how this plays out and how far down that direction they go.

Peter Blunden: ‘Sometimes when you attempt to hold politicians to account it’s viewed as some sort of campaign or biased coverage’

“I still think when a significant proportion of their audience is using Facebook in particular to access news, it would be a pretty brave decision to not have news available on that platform.”

While Stinton says he would not want to say which platforms should or should not be designated under the bargaining code, “one thing that I would like to see out of the News Media Bargaining Code review report when it drops, and one thing that we called for was some clearer criteria around how we can assess which platforms should be designated going forward, because I think that this industry changes so fast, we have to have that.”

Election coverage + advertising partnerships

With several election cycles across 2022, the media has put itself in focus with the consumers with some of its coverage, many believing in places it has crossed the line of partisanship.

“The starting point for me is that I just don’t believe audiences want to be told what to think”, says Davies. “I think it’s very important that media outlets provide factual journalism.”

“Columnists and even a newspaper in the lead up to an election can have a view, but I think a constant stream of telling people how to vote is not useful.”

“I think we’ve just got to really guard against opinion and campaigning becoming too much part of the news coverage.”

Blunden says “having just gone through the Victorian election, I think sometimes when you attempt to hold politicians to account it’s viewed as some sort of campaign or biased coverage.”

“I think our job is to shine a light on issues and we have quite a few live inquiries going in Victoria and there were attempts to stifle that and put that off until after the election, and I think both the Nine papers and ourselves took a pretty strong stand on that.”

Stinton says advertisers that come to The Guardian and any mainstream news outlet know what they are getting, so there is very rarely concern about the environment they are placing themselves in.

“Sure you can be next to some journalism which can be divisive or people can have strong views about something, but I would argue that’s a much better place to be in than the sewer that is social media at times.”

“Guardian readers, and I’m sure Peter would argue very strongly for his Mastheads are hugely engaged in what we do in a way that you just don’t see as you are scrolling through a newsfeed while you are waiting for the toilet on Facebook.”

Blunden agrees with Stinton’s assessment of social media as sometimes being a “sewer”.

“Sometimes I think we do stories that they’re not designed to please advertisers. We’ve got a lot of commercial partners and sometimes we do things that they’re not excited about because it’s journalism and there are stories that need to be told. But I do think trusted environments are really important for advertising.”

Privacy 

One of the biggest and most relevant storylines going into 2023, and under the new Labor federal government, Stinton says is incoming developments in privacy.

While the privacy act has already been under review under the previous government, he says the hacks and data breaches with Optus and Medibank have focused the minds of the Attorney General and the government to take action.

It’s potentially a really significant story for our industry, he says, and if the government was to adopt all the changes proposed in the recent privacy review discussion paper “then it would be a very substantial change to the way that the digital advertising market works”.

While he admits it is not likely for all changes to be applied, “we have to realise as an industry that Australia has some of the most relaxed privacy regulations in the world […] and that’s going to change probably next year, if not the year after”.

“Privacy is something which consumers are increasingly concerned about, and I think as an industry we need to get ahead of.”

Listen to the full conversation with Stinton, Davies and Blunden below on this week’s Mumbrellacast, or on your favourite podcast platform.