The death of the local rag

The headlines are being hogged by the TV stars, the daily news reporters being made redundant, and the local programmes going.
But at a much more grassroots level, we are also seeing the demise of the local free paper.
The ones that aren’t disappearing are shrinking, losing advertising revenue, missing out on eyes and revenue to the Facebook scrollers on community gossip pages.
NZME has announced 14 of its titles will go by Christmas; Stuff in the past couple of years has been making quieter cuts.
The New Zealand Local Government Association has sounded notes of warning and asked central Government to look at boosting its funding of local democracy reporters.
But the councils themselves are part of the problem – by withdrawing the advertising for plans and projects that they must publicise by law; they are draining the life blood from local papers.
They, however, have a responsibility to spend ratepayer dollars in the most effective way, and that often means on Facebook ads – the very forum that’s helped to sink newspaper revenue.
Today on The Detail, we talk to Newsroom co-editor Tim Murphy about the repercussions of losing a community media voice; and to the editor of one regional paper that’s thriving thanks to the support of the local council.
The Ruapehu District is a region swamped with news – the closure over summer of the Desert Road; abandonment of the iconic Chateau; ructions over its two big ski fields; overcrowding problems and tourist deaths on the Tongariro Crossing; the closure of two sawmills with 230 people losing their jobs.
The big media organisations come in for the main events, hit the headlines, then leave.
The Ruapehu Bulletin picks up the pieces.
“The main media they do the big ‘rah rah’,” says editor Robert Milne, “but because we’re a weekly, sod’s law, things always happen just after we’ve gone to print.
“But the following week we can start digging a bit deeper and get some finer detail on what’s happening.”
It’s not the job of local government to support local news, but if a council does patronise these smaller newspapers, it really helps.
The Ruapehu District Council is one of those helpers.
“They’re pretty damn good, to be fair,” says Milne.
The Bulletin is a 12-page, occasionally 16-page weekly paper with a circulation of 3,600 in the southern Ruapehu district where about 4,000 people live.
Milne knows it’s read, because people stop him in the street to complain if they don’t get one delivered to their mailbox.
He started working there in 1983, and he and his wife bought it in 1990 – they have one staff member who does sales and “everything else”.
“The dailies are here less and less,” he says.
“They’re only here for the main events … they don’t come and do the kids’ pet days and .. the A&P show and the rodeo and things like that. And definitely not council meetings.”
Milne says he tries to cover everything the council does, because even just a new footpath affects people.
“The council puts out a lot of information but to be honest it’s almost too much. We try to break it up into bite sized chunks,” he says.
The council advertises with him, and says it’s supported the paper in lots of different ways – including advocating for it to keep publishing during Covid lockdowns to cover the local aspects of the pandemic.
“People still want to know what’s happening in their own street … or in the next street,” he says. “And it seems to me that people want that even more, with so much access to information around the world, they want that local information and the local people’s stories.
Tim Murphy, Newsroom’s co-editor and a media commentator, says when a local paper folds the community loses its shared space.
“It’s like a drinking hole in the Serengeti that everyone comes to the one point to get their water on a Tuesday or a Thursday when they used to be delivered.
“You come across things, and it was always the case in newspapers or probably magazines and certainly daily newspapers … it’s a menu and you don’t know what you’re going there for until you turn all those pages.
“You get exposed more to other things. Other retailers, or other services actually catch your eye because they’re not what you expected when you went there.”
Murphy says their loss will be particularly evident next year, which is local body election year.
“A lot of candidates – not the ones who are incumbent (on councils) maybe, but candidates for councils and boards – would hope to be able get something about what they’re trying to put forward and their message out there to people, to a shared, broad audience; maybe a passive audience if you like; rather than people actively going on Facebook or on a news site looking for what those people might be up to.
“It will be harder. Democracy at that very basic level, will be harder to get that message across.”
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