Making a business out of local news. Not just difficult, but lemon difficult
Welcome to Unmade, kicked off on Saturday morning on board flight VA1544 home from Adelaide, and completed on Sunday afternoon at windswept Sisters Beach, Tasmania.
You know it’ll be gusty here when the BOM severe weather warning pops up in the weather app. And you know it will be really gusty when the surfers arrive.
Today’s writing soundtrack: Bruce Springsteen, Letter to You. A year on from release, and it’s still standing up.
It’s been four weeks today since Unmade kicked off, and there are now 1,211 of us.
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Amen to … *gestures at whole article* that.
I’ve learned the hard way this last week just how much of a void ther lack of local news reporters has left when it comes to scrutiny of local councils. On a personal level I’ve been involved in a local community group opposed to a proposed new (large-scale, commercial) daycare centre on a residential street. The local council has managed to secure approvals by taking advantage of a number of loopholes in relevant planning legislation. My role, given that I work in communications, was to engage local media – we still have 2x local news outlets nominally operating in our area as well as 2x metro/state-level news orgs (The West Australian plus Fairfax’s WA Today) and the ABC. Given that Western Australia is now heading into local council elections across the state, and the council in question is the biggest by population and financials in all of WA, I was (naively) shocked by how hard it was to get any local media interested in even following-up the story, or indeed to get anyone to bite at the idea that one of the functions of media is to hold government at all levels accountable. We’re also seeing allegations emerge against local/shire-based governments across the state, not just in my local area. Again due to my day job, I understand the business pressures that all levels of media face daily, but I’m challenged to work out how local media can survive under these circumstances, especially in a state as geographically large as WA but with such a small population concentrated around Perth. I really do hope that something emerges in terms of a new business model for local media – anything is better than letting it die.
Hey Tim.
“This week I’ll be doing a 9.10am send each day to see what that does to open rates.” Maybe not a great week for that given Apple’s mail changes: https://www.mailerlite.com/blog/apple-mail-privacy-protection
Cheers
Phil
Thanks for that heads-up, Phil. Very useful to know. I see that it’s opt-in for the Apple Mail users so I suspect the impact will be gradual. But in time that will change the game somewhat
Let’s hope so! iOS mail is our most used email client and, based on 95% of people opting out of app tracking on iPhones, we’re prepping for a significant quick shift.