News Corp launch regional publishing division with plans for digital subscription offer
Trompf
News Corp has launched a regional publishing division set to be led by executive general manager of North Queensland Nick Trompf, state director, Queensland metro and regional publishing held by Sean Ryan being made redundant.
The new division will house Hobart’s The Mercury, NT News, The Cairns Post, Townsville Bulletin, Gold Coast Bulletin, Geelong Advertiser and associated community publications.
Managing director of metro and regional publishing Damian Eales told Mumbrella: “This change came about solely because we see our portfolio of regional publications as being a very important part of our overall portfolio of publishing assets.
Could be a good move given online TV network streaming from the metro’s. Ultimately the regional communities will want to engage with their local news sources.
I just cannot see how this will make any money? Some of the old school baby boomers might subscribe, other than that though, what value will it add? What will I be able to read / discover / learn, that I cannot stumble upon for free? It is tough for the old school third party publishers; their rivers of gold have been ripped away, the game has changed. We shall see though.
There is absolutely no reason why this should not work – if managed properly. There is a lot of interest in parochial media. However it will need staff working in the regions gathering news and not be depend on wire services.
This feels like a digital version of what happened in print: first the independents get bought, with promises of re-capitalization. Then the local content shrinks to the one page summary and the back page sports. Then the ad money dies locally and all thats left is the majors.
The “local stories” pledge is great, but it won’t be cheap. The rest of the division is bleeding cash, and somebody with an accountancy heart is going to look at the bottom line spend and ask questions, at some future date. At that point, loss of independence of the publisher is going to come back into the room: want the local content? pay the full cost of producing it.
The commonality in the list of regionals is .. they are all regionals. There are tassie stories which cannot resonate in NSW, and people in SA won’t give a toss about stories from Burnie. I can see some bright spark trying to lump all small towns into one bucket and assume “one page does ’em all”
There is no doubt that the regional markets are very different to metro and tend toward monopoly. The potential for deregulation could see consolidation of print and radio in each place which would offer the best long term business potential given that tv everywhere is headed toward VOD.