‘This is a tech company as much as a media company’: Genevieve Jacobs on future-proofed sustainable news
Mumbrella’s Calum Jaspan chats with Region Media’s group editor, Genevieve Jacobs about building sustainable regional media, and why the news industry needs to be able to stand on its own two feet.
With almost 700,000 unique monthly visitors servicing a region of around one million people, Region Media, published of RiotAct and About Regional has established itself as a trusted and stable regional media outlet.
Group editor, Genevieve Jacobs says that the key to transforming RiotAct from the “well-known but relatively lightweight, feisty and sort of angry” website that offered up Canberra news and gossip, but never really found its way commercially, was by taking the view that “people won’t trust us with their money in the back end, if they don’t trust the content at the front end”.
Founded in 2016 by tech and business operators Tim White and Michael McGoogan, Region Media purchased RiotAct with the pair seeing the potential in the 124,000 monthly users as “something they could really work with”, alongside “strong name recognition, but not a great reputation to be honest”.
