Who’s afraid of the online invaders?
With new entrants into the online news space such as The Guardian and The Conversation, do established players like Fairfax and News Corp have anything to fear? In a feature that first appeared in Encore, Nic Christensen investigates.
It wasn’t long after The Guardian newspaper confirmed it would launch an Australian edition in January this year that the local media began speculating about the threat to established players.
It was Fairfax in The Guardian’s cross hairs, reported The Australian, just days after Guardian UK editor Alan Rusbridger confirmed the expansion. The broadsheet ran with the headline: “High-end, left-leaning websites on notice.” In the months that followed both News and Fairfax took swipes at the UK newspaper. Jack Matthews, then boss of Fairfax metro told Encore’s sister publication Mumbrella: “If there’s five or six journalists against our 700, I like our chances.”
Senior News Corp editorial executive Campbell Reid criticised the logic of the operation comparing it to reading the “Australian version of Playboy”, when you could just get the original.
There wouldn’t be an “opportunity” for the big overseas media players to enter the marketplace if the Australian ones were doing their job and meeting the demands of the Australian audience in the first place.
Personally as an on-line news audience (their target market) I welcome the competition. Hopefully I start reading more newsworthy content which the Conversation frequently provides me with.
The Conversation as the future? Really? Begging for money from public institutions while calling yourself “independent”? And giving the content away is certainly easier if you don’t give a cent to the writers. What a joke.