The news came as a depressing reminder of the realities of traditional TV news.
WIN News will cut jobs and no longer provide dedicated local TV bulletins to regions across Victoria and Queensland, the network announced on Monday.
BENDIGO ADVERTISER – MAY 24
The demise of local TV news has been coming former 20 years. As a 15 year old aspiring journalist, I did work experience with Win News in Ballarat. I remember the News Director telling me how tough it was for the industry. The advertising market had crashed and there was no sign of recovery.
At that time, Win News presented all of the Victorian news out of its Ballarat state headquarters. I remember watching the anchor Denis Walter present seven bulletins (six pre-recorded and one live) one after another. Denis is a great presenter and showed how much he cared about the local community.
But I wondered about how much you could really know about what’s going on in say, Mildura, when you live in Geelong. Regardless, they had journalists on the ground in those regional centres.
The other thing I noticed was how archaic the systems were. Not just in terms of technology. But all those people, all that great, for half an hour of news. Each reporter would cover three stories a day, and a cameraman/editor would rush along as well. Everyone hoping for a traveller (a story that could be shared across all bulletins for the state).
POPULATION SEACHANGE
But everyone was a slave to the fundamental flaws of TV News to date. It’s cumbersome, and the story is only as good as the pictures. The cost of operating satellites and transmission towers are enormous. I don’t know how they keep the lights on. Compare that to people using a device they already own on a mobile network they pay for to access video and written content they are interested in. We live in a world full of niches. How does a half hour bulletin produced from a different state even compete with that?
Fast forward to 2021, and the retreat of local TV news comes at a time when the population is doing the exact opposite. Net migration to Australia’s regions is at a record high.
Supercharged by the desire to get out of the cities thanks to COVID lockdowns, but also because of technology. With the NBN now up and running in more places, ideally there’s very little difference between working from home in the city, and working from home somewhere a bit further out.
Of course, public transport is still pretty slow in comparison with Europe or Asia, but if you don’t need to travel, many Australians are discovering that a tree change or sea change is a great way to improve their liveability, and cut their costs. After all, the mid 20th century saw a huge number of Europeans migrate to Australia to get away from living on top of each other and to the promise of a quarter acre block.
THE POWER OF LOCAL
I began my career at a local newspaper called the Southern Peninsula Local. It was the bedrock of the local community, and was the independent alternative to the News Corp owned Leader.
My editor, Zoe Sterling, was a brilliant mentor and a fabulous editor. She didn’t just care about the local community, she thoroughly enjoyed sticking it up to authority, whether that be the council or the local politicians. The Local (which people often confused with the pub), was owned by three people who listened to the community and created something unique and special. People were willing to pay 55 cents for it, and the advertisers loved to be involved.
Why? Because it owned the community. We all knew every aspect of how it worked and why, and who was in charge or what was to blame.
They eventually sold to a former metro newspaper man who came in, changed everything, dropped the local from The Local, and focused too much on Portsea real estate. Within a year the paper had folded.
The ABS said a net 43,000 Australians moved to regional areas from capital cities in 2020. That is more than double the number in 2019.
The ABS says a net loss of people from the capitals has been seen before, but the amount of people staying in the regions is new.
NEW EXPECTATIONS
And city people bring with them city expectations. There are already articles about how cosmopolitan voters moving to regional areas may in fact change voting patterns and reduce the conservative grip on regional seats. But that’s a story for another day.
My point is, when John and Linda from Malvern move to Woodend, they don’t just expect great coffee when they arrive, they also expect the same level of infrastructure and service.
As the author illustrates, the laws of supply and demand aren’t working for local news. Even when viewers turned to news in record numbers last year to find out about lockdowns and health advice, the revenue for those local news outlets collapsed dramatically.
The pandemic has accelerated a crisis which has been a long time coming for local news.
The other problem is… the audience doesn’t really know much about what’s happening to local news. Even though in the industry, we can feel and see our colleagues losing their jobs.
In late 2018, 71 percent of Americans told the Pew Research Center that their local news media was doing very or somewhat well financially, even though only 14 percent said they had paid for local news in the past year.
PEW RESEARCH CENTRE
TECHNOLOGY IS ON OUR SIDE
But like every part of our economy, whenever an established presence starts to enter crisis territory, usually the solution isn’t far away.
My father lives in a regional area and I visit him when Melbourne isn’t in lockdown. Five years ago, he was glued to the local news on TV and had the local newspaper delivered every day. During COVID, the newspaper stopped printing, yet his appetite for local news didn’t stop with it.
He turned to his local community Facebook group. He loves it because if there’s a crash on the freeway, he’ll know about it long before a traffic reporter will read it out on the radio. If a pub is closing, he’ll know about it long before a journalist has picked up the story, passed it via the editor, gone out to cover it and compiled a piece for a newspaper that no longer publishes.
The fact is, local news is still happening, it’s just not happening through the three traditional ways – TV, radio and print.
Of course, just like when TV arrived, the movie business found a way to survive. They made fewer but bigger movies, with budgets that TV networks could never imagine. That worked until Netflix came along.
NOT A GOOD TIME FOR MIDDLE-MEN
Following the news from Win, I fear local TV networks across Australia will become nothing more than relay towers for US content and reality shows made in and for the sorts of demographics that buy from Coles in Sydney and Melbourne.
With the sudden rise of streaming services directly from Hollywood studios, how long until people realise that for $10, they can cut out the middleman.
When you find yourself in a situation where your structural costs to operate are so high that you have to pair back or cut the very thing that makes you unique, well, good luck with your business.
Facebook community groups and noticeboards have become the go to place for so many people right around the Australia. It’s a magnificent space of shared ideas and public feedback.
The future of local TV news won’t be just on the TV. It’ll come from within the community, using technology that is now in everybody’s hands. The divide between city and regional living and expectations are dramatically narrowing and the upsides are incredible.
The answer is doing it smarter, and putting local first.
Donald Trump, former president of the United States, hated Arraignment Day I in Manhattan two months ago, the first time a former president had been criminally charged.
Trump was being forced against his will into a proceeding he had utter contempt for.He was being arrested and fingerprinted and photographed under an indictment under the jurisdiction of Manhattan in New York City for allegations of hush money payments and fraudulent bookkeeping practices to conceal criminal activity. Trump heard the charges read out against him and he entered a plea of not guilty.
Trump had a terrible day. Trump wore a scowl throughout. His countenance was fearsome.What Trump hated most about his arraignment in New York is that he had to sit at a table with his counsel side by side with him — equal to him — and with the judge above him looking down on him. Trump could not control the discussion and could not interrupt to make his points.
Trump was subordinate to the judge. He was subordinate to no one as president.
Arraignment Day II
Arraignment Day II in Miami will be worse from Trump, even more stressful.The charges are substantially more serious:the alleged violation of federal criminal statutes involving the alleged mishandling and illegal possession of classified documents, lying to legal authorities, and obstruction of justice.Potential penalties run to years in prison and millions of dollars in fines.
Trump throughout his business life had always crafted his affairs to avoid being a defendant. But in his term in office, he was caught up in it big time. He was a defendant in two impeachment trials – again, unprecedented events – and left office in disgrace.
But Trump does not feel disgraced. He never does.Trump does not have a reverse gear.He never retreats.Never admits. Never concedes. Never yields.Trump is never embarrassed. Trump never feels ashamed. When something goes wrong, it is always the fault of someone else.
Bill Barr SLAMS his former boss:
“He’s not a victim here. He was totally wrong that he had the right to have those documents. Those documents are among the most sensitive secrets that the country has…He had no right to maintain them and retain them”pic.twitter.com/VViNFpwbzt
— Republicans against Trump (@RpsAgainstTrump) June 11, 2023
And Trump never repents.
Trump can feel this way because Trump is waging war on behalf of his armies in “the final battle” for the future of the county. In his first, fiery post-indictment speech in Georgia, Trump said, “They’ve launched one witch hunt after another to try and stop our movement, to thwart the will of the American people.In the end, they’re not coming after me. They’re coming after you … “Either we have a Deep State, or we have a Democracy…Either the Deep State destroys America, or WE destroy the Deep State.”
It is a powerful formulation, and his true believers love it.
Hours later, In North Carolina, Trump mainlined his distilled message for the Republican crowd:
“We are a failing nation. We are a nation in decline. And now these radical left lunatics want to interfere with our elections by using law enforcement.
It’s totally corrupt and we cannot let it happen.
.@RepDanGoldman: "Donald Trump believed the law does not apply to him, and that he would do anything he could to conceal and maintain possession of highly, highly classified national security information that would jeopardize our national security." https://t.co/IfX8bV4EVkpic.twitter.com/Gvjv8aNFkn
With you at my side we will demolish the Deep State.
We will expel the warmongers from our government.
We will drive out the globalists.
We will cast out the communists.
We will throw off the sick political class that hates our country.
We will roll out the fake news media.
We will defeat Joe Bide and we will liberate America from those villains once and for all.”
Any lesser mortal would be staggered by these events.Any other presidential candidate would be driven from the race.But not Trump.
Debase and disgrace
Trump is using the same playbook today as he successfully triggered after being charged in New York:debase and disgrace the legal process by terming it completely political.Trump said the federal indictment is “election interference at the highest level.”
Almost every other Republican running for president has adopted this line, insulating Trump from pressure to leave the field.
Trump’s chief opponent, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis said after these indictments: “The weaponization of federal law enforcement represents a mortal threat to a free society. We have for years witnessed an uneven application of the law depending upon political affiliation.”
Republican congressperson Nancy Mace: “This is a banana republic. I can’t believe this is happening.” Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene: “Democrats are arresting their political enemies. and they work together in their corrupt ways to get it done.”
Trump is using his affliction to raise millions of dollars from his base.
Trump will likely face Arraignment Day III in Georgia in August.A state prosecutor is expected to charge Trump with criminal interference in the certification of Georgia’s vote for Joe Biden in the 2020 presidential election.
As of now, there is no sign of cracks in Trump’s support among Republican voters.There is no surge to another candidate.What remains to be seen is whether Republican voters, as they see Trump spend his days in courtrooms and his evenings at rallies around the country, reach a conclusion that this is a spectacle too far, too much to bear, and that they want to turn to another conservative populist who stands for them in the political trials— and not the criminal trials – of 2024.
It’s not often that a U.S. President faces federal indictment, but if it’s going to happen to anyone, it might as well be Donald Trump first.
The news that Donald Trump is facing a federal investigation over the removal of secret documents from the White House in 2021 came as no surprise.
Keen watches of the Washington soap opera have seen this playbook before, albeit in a different form.
There is no doubt that Donald Trump is a Washington outsider. But as seriously damaged as he may be (thanks to the events of January 6), his support base has only grown whenever he faces scrutiny.
For his supporters, his legal woes mirror their own relationship with the government – a giant, unfair beast that picks and chooses its fights.
Trump is accused of storing sensitive documents—including those concerning matters of national security—in boxes, some even in a shower.
The documents were seized last August when investigators from the FBI executed a search warrant at Mar-a-Lago.
The Department of Justice has historically avoided charging people who are running for public office. Whether they should do that is a debate for another day. But it’s happening now. And it’s making it all too easy for Trump to claim there is a concerted campaign to get him away from the White House.
Trump exposed the deep state. IF they exist, they probably don’t want him back in power. Whether they exist doesn’t matter really, because plenty of Trump’s supporters agree with him, and believe the secret state is working against them. Call it QAnon, call it a conspiracy – it doesn’t matter in a democracy.
The DoJ now has to go all in. Failing to secure a conviction would be a serious embarrassment for the department.
This is the second time Trump has been indicted in recent months, yet the opinion polls show he only increases his popularity among MAGA and Republican voters. It leaves the Republican party in a difficult position. Support their leading candidate or support the law?
As other Republicans rallied around the embattled candidate, Trump held on to his loyal base of supporters.
For the Democrats, and for Biden, another reality will soon sink in – if Trump becomes President, and they lose office next year, how will a Trump-run DoJ deal with them?
Broadly, the tit-for-tat one-up-manship of U.S. politics is breaking tradition and potentially breaking the country.