Long before Covid-19 made briefings by state premiers must-watch daily news events, I had wanted to find a way to expand Guardian Australia’s coverage of the states.
State governments control many of the services at the centre of readers’ lives: schools, hospitals, roads, police, environmental approvals and emergency services. Many of the tax, planning and social housing policies that may ease the housing crisis are in the hands of the states. And of course the pandemic highlighted the fact that it’s the premiers who have the power to lock down our cities or close domestic borders.
As we have seen with energy generation, when states don’t like a federal government’s policy positioning, they can find ways to work around it.
And as has been all too evident in the responses to the east coast flooding these past few weeks, part of the problem with slow and inadequate government response to global heating-driven natural disasters is the complex delineation of responsibilities between the federal government and the states.
All of this means we obviously need to look at the federation through the lens of both Canberra and the states, to properly understand how it functions, or, in some cases, doesn’t.
But space on the homepage of a news website is as restricted as on the front page of a newspaper. A story that dominates state news may fall much further down a national news list.
The solution we have found is the state-based containers we are launching today. These are sections of the news site for state stories – initially in Queensland, New South Wales and Victoria – visible only to readers in the relevant state (although readers can select news from another state if they prefer).
A big state story will still lead our site, but the state containers will allow us to follow it for longer, and to make sure we have covered the most important stories in that state, even when they don’t dominate the national news, or when other national events may supersede them.
We won’t have the volume of coverage of the big state mastheads, but guided by Guardian Australia’s news values and priorities, the new state editors and reporters will offer readers a fresh perspective on their state. Being national, but with state-focused teams, we will aim to knit state and federal news together so our audience gets a fuller picture.
I hope this three-state trial, funded by the Google News Initiative, will pave the way for Guardian Australia to set up bureaus in other states. Most of all, I want our readers to receive the most comprehensive and relevant news we can provide.
If you want to know more about the new containers or are having trouble seeing your region’s, click here
