Michael Waite is a good talker. Friendly, knowledgable and enthusiastic, he’s the kind of guy who can turn a yes-or-no question into an entertaining, minutes-long response with more twists and turns than his remarkable journey to be that rarest of beasts – a 21st-century founder of a printed newspaper.
Which is why it says so much that one of the few times he is lost for words is when asked how it feels to have not only launched that paper in rural South Australia at the height of the Covid-19 pandemic but to still be standing almost three years and more than 100 editions later.
“I’m stumbling with my words because I just really can’t believe it’s gone this way,” Waite says of the against-the-odds success of the Naracoorte News, the weekly paper that went from idea to print in 20 days under the guardianship of a man with no prior experience in the world of newspapers.
“If I had known how much work it was going to take, I probably wouldn’t do it again,” he laughs. “But watching this thing play out and actually succeed has been amazing.”
Waite is not alone in doing the seemingly impossible by launching a printed newspaper at a time when the newspaper game has never been more dire.
According to the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission’s Digital Platforms Inquiry, 106 local and regional newspapers closed between 2008 and 2018. When Covid hit, things worsened: major media players News Corp and Australian Community Media (ACM) suspended or shut dozens of papers in the early months of the pandemic.
When ACM suspended printing of the Naracoorte Herald in April 2020, Waite stepped into the void. A similar story unfolded in the Queensland town of Kingaroy when News Corp moved the South Burnett Times entirely online and several redundant staff responded by starting a printed rival 100 metres down the road. Farther north, a husband-and-wife duo launched the Burdekin Local News to service the paper-loving locals of Ayr and surrounds.
Much was made of the launches at the time. National media coverage. Applause from locals. Articles detailing “extraordinary rescue efforts” and “unlikely saviours”.
All up, statistics provided by the Public Interest Journalism Initiative (PIJI) suggest 88 new independent newspapers have launched since April 2020.
What happened next though? After the crowdfunding campaigns, the first editions and the pandemic itself, has it been a case of thriving, barely surviving or sadly dying?
‘We knew there was demand for papers’
Damien Morgan has done more than just launch a newspaper in recent years. He has built a newspaper group.
“We did one and then we did another, and then another, and it’s gone from there,” he says of Today News Group, which launched Burnett Today in Kingaroy in 2020 and has since grown to be home to 13 publications across regional Queensland and South Australia.
“It was daunting, no question, and it remains challenging, but the bottom line was we knew there was demand for papers (in these communities).”
Having started his career in broadcast journalism, Morgan had spent a couple of decades as a commercial consultant to the regional news industry when News Corp announced it was stopping the presses on more than 100 community newspapers in 2020. Sensing an opportunity, he partnered with the longtime independent publishers Paul Thomas and Bruce Allen and, with the help of several recruits who had been made redundant at Kingaroy’s South Burnett Times, launched Burnett Today.
“There have been some papers start and stop, but the truth is the people behind them weren’t publishers,” Morgan says. “If I had tried to do it on my own, I wouldn’t have lasted two minutes, but the guys I’ve teamed with know what they’re doing.
“We have a different business model in that we charge $3 to $3.50. Papers that were previously heavily subsidised by advertising might have been $2, but asking the public to pay a bit more for the journalism has been a gamechanger.
“We’re not Rupert [Murdoch] but three years in and they’re all going well.”
In Naracoorte, four hours’ drive south-east of Adelaide, ACM’s decision to stop printing the 145-year-old Naracoorte Herald in early 2020 was met with disappointment, anger and frustration among the town’s 5,300 residents.
Waite took more direct action.
“We said ‘we’ll give it a go for 10 weeks and if the community wants it, it might have a chance’,” he says of launching the Naracoorte News on the back of securing $5,000 investments from four local businesses.
Having grown up in Naracoorte, Waite made a new life for himself in the US as a tennis professional before becoming chief financial officer at several large businesses.
He had returned to his home town in late 2019 as part of an around-the-world odyssey with his American wife and three daughters, but within days they were rocked by his mother’s cancer diagnosis. They chose to remain by her side and shortly after learning her prognosis was terminal, in March 2020, Covid-19 hit.
It was a devastating series of events but also led to the birth of a 21st-century newspaper.
“I call myself the volunteer and founder,” Waite says of his role at the weekly Naracoorte News, which has a cover price of $2 and employs six permanent staff including reporters who cover five core rounds – council, healthcare, education, communication and infrastructure – while community members submit articles about other local events.
“I get a lot of grief because I run it like a paper from 1875, with lots of stories and very few pictures. It is essentially a 16-page paper that has 16,000 words and as I tell readers who phone to complain, I’d put more photos in but tell me whose story didn’t deserve to run this week.”
Most importantly, the Naracoorte News is self-sustaining. It made a $5,000 profit last financial year and has donated more than $86,000 to local community groups across its brief history as part of its The News Gives Back initiative.
“The core purpose of the paper is to cover the local council and other tough topics, but the core dividend of that work is the giving back program,” says Waite, who returned to the US last year and continues to support his team remotely.
“When I returned … after about 80 editions, it wasn’t about me any more. It was truly just the community’s paper.”
‘Without advertising, the paper couldn’t survive’
On 1 September last year, the Burdekin Local News hit the streets of Ayr bearing a front-page editorial its publisher hoped he’d never have to pen.
“Unfortunately, this is our last edition,” Scott Morrison wrote of the newspaper he founded with his wife, Stacey, almost two years earlier.
“It’s simply not viable to continue making the paper.”
The dream had lasted 98 editions, with Morrison identifying a lack of advertising support as the core problem.
“Major businesses in the area are monopolies and do not see the need to advertise. Small businesses don’t allocate budgets for advertising and rely on Facebook (posts).”
Susanna Freymark had spent five years editing the Richmond River Express Examiner in Casino, New South Wales, when News Corp closed the 150-year-old paper.
“I cried,” Freymark recalls of that devastating day in 2020. “I was very upset but I realised I had to pull myself together because the community were going to be even more upset.”
It wasn’t long before the Richmond River Independent was born.
“I didn’t want to own a paper, I just wanted to be editor, so we had the idea of setting up a community association and did a crowdfunding campaign that raised $11,000. I think there was only one week when people didn’t have a paper.”
Then, after 63 editions, history repeated.
“Money was always an issue,” Freymark says of the Independent’s eventual demise. “We were getting by but then Covid hit again and the town just shut down.
“It was heartbreaking when it folded. I was a big believer that quality news would see the paper survive, so it was quite upsetting to realise it couldn’t.”
All up, 19 of the 88 independent print papers to have launched since April 2020 have since closed, according to PIJI, a net gain of 69 papers. But another 80 papers have been shuttered entirely since the start of 2020, mainly by big players News Corp, ACM and Seven West Media, while 101 shifted from print to digital only.
Freymark, too, has opted to persevere under a digital model, launching IndyNR.com, a website covering Richmond Valley and Kyogle, where she is essentially a one-woman news machine.
“In smaller towns, people are just thrilled you’ve turned up to cover their story,” she says. “Because it’s a validation of them and what’s happening in their lives.”
