Abstract
This article documents and examines the re-establishment of a local newspaper in Alice Springs, central Australia, after the region's long-standing masthead the Centralian Advocate ceased printing in 2020. The town had attracted constant negative media coverage, with national news outlets and social media pages spotlighting social disorder and crime. This led to increasing concern among residents about a lack of relevant local news coverage about the diverse communities of Alice Springs. A new newspaper, the Centralian Today, was launched in 2023 in a novel partnership between a newly formed community foundation and an established independent commercial news company. This study adopts narrative and thematic analysis to examine data gathered in 47 interviews with community members, indigenous leaders and news producers to document the re-establishment of the newspaper and explore community perceptions of the social, civic and democratic health of the region before and after the arrival of the new newspaper.
Keywords
Introduction
In 2020, Alice Springs’ long-standing newspaper the Centralian Advocate was discontinued in print after 73 years in operation (Robinson, 2023). The article had covered major global stories such as the disappearance of baby Azaria Chamberlain, the murder of British backpacker Peter Falconio and the Northern Territory intervention. The decision to stop printing formed part of a major, nation-wide cost cutting strategy by News Corp in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic. At the time, News Corp announced more than 125 titles would be closed or become digital only, leading to hundreds of job losses across the sector (Ward, 2021).
Shortly before the closure of the Centralian Advocate, the newspaper published a front-page story ‘We Don't Feel Safe in our Town’. The story reported on the efforts of a local businessman and his Facebook page called Action for Alice 2020 (Geppa, 2020). The page was established after the businessman's bakery was targeted by a series of vandal attacks. The page aimed to highlight the extent of crime in Alice Springs and encouraged residents to share footage and experiences of anti-social behaviour to the page. Action for Alice began with 500 ‘likes’ but, after expanded news media coverage, it quickly amassed more than 60,000 followers. It received national media attention, with its founder making regular appearances in the NT News and The Australian and on the ABC and Sky News, with headlines such as ‘I want my town back’, ‘It's all smoke and mirrors here’, ‘It's carnage’, and ‘We can't wait for generational change’. However, in 2023, Action for Alice was hit by a 29-day Facebook ban for bullying and harassment after posting footage of a woman throwing chairs in a food court.
This article documents and explores efforts within the Alice Springs community to re-establish a local newspaper presence with the hope of dispelling negativity and invigorating a sense of community and pride within the township. It expands on literature that explores the emergence of new newspapers in locations where a former newspaper has closed (see: Barnes et al., 2022; Bowd, 2021) and growing international literature that engages with audience expectations of local news providers (Hess et al., 2023; Heiselberg and Hopmann, 2024). Using a combination of narrative analysis and thematic analysis of 47 semi-structured interviews with 25 community members, indigenous leaders and news media personnel, the research highlights the evolution of a novel relationship between commercial news media and a local community foundation as a model to enhance local news access in Australia. As part of this approach, the newly established Mparntwe Alice Springs Community Foundation actively pursued suitable and experienced news providers to re-establish a local newspaper presence in the town. It committed to purchasing regular advertising in the new newspaper, which it considered to be a way to promote its vision to establish constructive conversation, leadership and action towards a shared future. This led to the creation of the Centralian Today newspaper, managed and owned by independent Australian media company the Today News Group.
In this article we explore people's perceptions of life in Alice Springs without a newspaper, before the Today News Group began printing the Centralian Today in August 2023. We then returned for follow-up interviews in 2024 to qualitatively gauge whether their expectations had been met. We find that expectations for the new newspaper were high and, while it was praised for its sport and positive community coverage, there remained a need for more in-depth coverage of key social issues and place-based leadership of public conversation and debate on behalf of community.
Alice springs in focus
Alice Springs (Mparntwe, in Eastern Arrente language) is the regional hub of Central Australia with a population of almost 26,000 (ABS, 2021). Its population growth has been modest in recent years, around 1% (ABS, 2021), which bucks the general trend of depopulation in remote areas but is in line with Australia's other regional cities, which are growing. The region also has a large itinerant population consisting of foreign and Australian tourists, Aboriginal Australians visiting from other central communities and Australian or foreign workers on short-term contracts. The average Alice Springs resident is more likely to be younger, fully employed and renting a house than the average Australian, according to the latest Australian Bureau of Statistics census data. The median age of this population is 34, which is four years younger than the Australian median, and 20% of residents identify as Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander, which is considerably more than the Australia-wide national figure of 2.9%. About 14% of the population were born overseas, in places such as India (3.7%) and the Philippines (2.3%) (ABS, 2021).
Alice Springs is the major economic, business and service hub of the region, relying largely on mining, construction, tourism and primary industries. Government funding for regional service delivery (especially healthcare and social assistance) and defence also plays a role.
The city has a vibrant list of unique events including Desert Mob (one of the nation's oldest Aboriginal art festivals) and is known as the gateway to some of central Australia's most recognisable landscapes, including Uluru-Kata Tjuta National Park and the MacDonnell Ranges.
Why local news matters
The perilous state of local news in Australia has attracted significant attention from policymakers, and intensified during COVID-19 when hundreds of commercial newspapers closed their doors and many others became online-only editions (Ross et al. 2021; Ward, 2021; PIJI, 2020, as cited in Hess and Waller, 2021). Two major media companies, News Corp Australia and Australian Community Media [ACM], instigated the majority of these closures and cutbacks, pulling resources and profits from their small, local publications to focus on news platforms with broader regional reach and/or to preserve their most prized state and national publications (Hess and McAdam, 2024a). One of the most powerful and obvious forms of degradation in any local ecosystem involves the loss of place-based resources. Scholars researching local journalism highlight that, for news to be considered legitimate among audiences, it must first and foremost be local and, as a result, expectations of profit among commercial players must be reasonable (see Hess and Waller, 2017; Wahl Jorgensen, 2022). Harte et al. (2018) argue in the UK that one of the greatest threats to local news is the withdrawal of journalists from a community over time. Visibility and sensibility about a local area is considered paramount to a news outlet's long-term sustainability (McAdam and Hess, 2024). This comes from spending time in a place, understanding its peoples, history, politics, geography and cultures.
The state of local journalism is considered such a critical issue because there is a well-documented link between public-interest journalism and its role in lubricating conversations about public affairs, as well as providing communities with information that supports social order, safety, wellbeing and social connection (Bowd, 2021; Hess and Waller, 2017). Local news is considered important to reinforcing an ‘imagined community’ as tied to a geographic location where people share a sense of place and connection, and are widely recognised for contributing to community social capital (Bowd, 2021; Putnam, 2000). As political watchdogs, local news plays a role in holding those in power to account and helps residents engage in democratic processes, often providing them with a voice and advocating for change (Firmstone and Coleman, 2014). A well-resourced local news outlet can also act as a social connector, or the ‘social glue’ (Olsen, 2021: 814; see also, Dugmore et al., 2024), that binds people to each other and to the places where they live and work. Research in Australia and internationally that examine audience expectations of local news further indicate a desire for news outlets to provide a balance between relevant, reliable news that helps people go about their daily lives and stories that generate a sense of connection to community and engage in civic conversation, as well as accountability reporting (Hess et al., 2023; Heiselberg and Hopmann, 2024). Heiselberg and Hopmann (2024) argue local media are especially well placed to engage in practices such as constructive journalism that aim to progress issues or generate solutions in order to meet these audience expectations. Hess and Waller (2017), meanwhile, contend local news outlets play a powerful role in championing and advocating on behalf of the communities they serve, facilitating public conversation and debate and develop meaningful solutions to problems (see also: Dodd, 2021; Lough and McIntyre, 2023).
There too is scholarship that explores the emergence of news outlets in locations where a former newspaper has closed (see: Barnes et al., 2022; Bowd, 2021). This research has largely focused on documenting the trend, especially during the COVID-19 pandemic when there was a flurry of closures and openings of local news outlets (Dickson, 2020). Studies have prioritised gathering data from the owners of new news ventures to understand their aims and intensions for starting such a business in a changing media landscape (see: Jenkins, 2020). For many, it has been the desire to re-establish the traditional values of regional print news, with start-ups adopting ‘community-centred, locally shaped news values’ and reasserting community journalism as ‘social glue’ (Barnes et al., 2022). The business models underpinning these ‘grassroots’ locally owned and operated news outlets have been described as ‘lean’ (Bowd, 2021: 73) and their future sustainability ‘uncertain’ (Barnes et al., 2022: 1). There is, however, a paucity of literature that explores audience perceptions of new newspapers, and fewer that explore the role community foundations may play in establishing these outlets in Australia.
Research approach
A purposive sample (Bryman, 2016) of 25 community members was recruited for this study. This sample included leaders in local health, politics, sport, business, education, charity and indigenous sectors. Individuals were identified using publicly available sources. Some participants were identified using a snowball sampling technique (Bryman, 2016), including local identities. In addition, representatives of the newly established Mparntwe Alice Springs Community Foundation and the newspaper company behind the new Centralian Today were also identified and interviewed to gain insight into how the partnership established and their hopes and vision for the newspaper. The interviews provided data for a narrative analysis, which focused on people's accounts of past, present and future events, the significance of context for unfolding events, and their recollection and perceptions of those events (Bryman, 2016). A first round of semi-structured interviews (Lindlof and Taylor, 2017) was conducted with 25 participants between July and August 2023. Participants had lived in Alice Springs for between 1 and 50 years and were aged between 18 and 100 years. The research aligned with the National Australian Ethics framework and was approved by Deakin University. In March and April 2024, the research team returned for follow-up interviews, of which 22 participants agreed. Code words were manually used to develop themes and the software Nvivo was also utilised to identify key concepts for data analysis. A qualitative content analysis (Riffe et al., 2023) of news coverage in the printed newspaper was also conducted over several sample periods between 2023 and 2024. The content featured on each page of each edition was read and sorted into predetermined type-orientated categories (Macnamara, 2018), which align with common newspaper content: ‘news articles’, ‘photographs’, ‘advertisements’, and ‘other’, with ‘other’ including content such as puzzles and TV guides. This sorting was not aimed at providing quantitative data, rather a general overview of the type of content this publication was providing to its community.
Documenting the return of a newspaper
Amidst the attention surrounding the social media page Action for Alice and at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, local businesswoman, volunteer and philanthropist Libby Prell began investigating efforts to bring about the return of a local news masthead to Alice Springs. The objective was to re-establish a reliable, independent product of public record, that would invest in public interest journalism and report the ‘light and shade’ of a community in a fair, considered and impartial manner. As Ms Prell highlights: Why bring back a newspaper? It's not seeing yourself in the community. It's not seeing your daughter on the front page to celebrate an achievement. It's not knowing about somebody's death. It's not knowing that council have overstepped a line. It's not knowing that there are ‘X amount’ of kids on the street that are breaking into properties and businesses. Not knowing whether a rumour that the hospital is down 40 staff is true or not. All of this needs to be said and people need to know about it so that there are solutions, there are answers, there are open conversations and therefore finding solutions and building back that network. We’ve lost all of that connection with each other. (interview with author, 2023)
Ms Prell said she felt the commercial sector had the strongest understanding of the skills required to create a viable newspaper. She partnered with Alice Springs’ leadership and management expert John Huigen to advise and advance the agenda. Together, they established the Mparntwe Alice Springs Community Foundation with the key objective of building constructive conversation, strengthening capacity and leadership, and building community and strategic action. The foundation would provide early support to re-establish a newspaper. Mr Huigen said both the foundation and the rise of the newspaper emerged from a concern that hope for a strong and shared future was being lost in Alice Springs.
After some discussion with the independent Australian media provider the Today News Group, the foundation elected to support a new newspaper through a weekly page of advertising. Rather than fund the newspaper to cover specific stories that aligned with its interest, or fund the salary of a journalist, Ms Prell and Mr Huigen said it was important the foundation remained ‘at arm's length’ from newsroom operations in the interests of transparency and impartiality. This aligns with the work of scholars such as Konieczna (2022), who argues one advantage of the traditional advertising model is transparency. Other local media scholars have highlighted that the death of the advertising model in a digital era is a myth, especially in Australia, given it continues to be the major revenue source of the majority of local news outlets (Hess and McAdam, 2024b). Advertising in the Alice Springs publication was considered to have the dual benefit of serving as a guaranteed source of revenue for the news outlet and provide an important platform for the foundation to circulate community messages around its strategy of ‘building a shared future’.
The arrangement between the Foundation and the Today News Group was formed in 2023. The Today News Group is an independent media publisher of newspaper and online mastheads in Australia. Director Damian Morgan said a guaranteed page of advertising from a foundation provided a necessary baseline to invest in a new product in Alice Springs, especially given high distribution costs for printing and attracting journalists and other personnel. He said the company could have encouraged an arrangement with the foundation to help fund the cost of journalism salaries (similar to foundations in the US). However, advertising provided some surety to the business model as well as enabling the foundation an opportunity to promote its own positive messages, as Mr Morgan highlights:. The foundation has grander plans to do many other community projects and so we can be a voice for them, and the pages of advertising will also be a voice for them. So, in theory, it's a win-win. (interview with author, 2023)
The first edition of the Centralian Today was printed on August 31, 2023. Its digital presence includes a website featuring a home page and news stories under sections such as ‘news’, ‘sport’ and ‘entertainment’, and also providing an option for subscribers to access pdf versions of the printed newspaper (Centralian Today, 2025). There is also a Centralian Today Facebook page, which has about 1400 followers. The cover price of the printed newspaper is $4, which a digital subscription costing $168 annually or $14 monthly. In July 2024, news management said the Centralian Today had an audience of 9926, based on estimates from readership of print and digital editions and social media insights. The masthead employs two journalists and has one regular contributor. As well as regular advertising from the Mparntwe Alice Springs Community Foundation, other advertisers include local businesses, government departments and community groups.
Before: perceptions of a town without a newspaper
Interviews with community leaders highlighted that the increasing national profile of Facebook page Action for Alice had generated unwelcome attention and had become a challenge for the community. Participants used terms such as ‘suffocating’, ‘unbridled’, and ‘out of control’ to describe the social media attention. These quotes from interview participants capture the sentiment: I think that page served a purpose. Absolutely. It did serve a purpose for getting the attention that we needed. But again, now it's about perception and getting people back. Otherwise, no one would want to live in Alice Springs. So, it's finding a balance. (Participant #3, interview with author, 2023) And: … definitely the narrative about what we've experienced with the Facebook group has had a really negative impact. I think there's probably a lot more mistrust, there's more angst in town because the only information that you'll be getting about stuff that was happening was from a Facebook group. (Participant #15, interview with author, 2023) You see some of the comments and it's not even people from Alice, or even Australia commenting. The local voice just gets drowned out. (Participant #15, interview with author, 2023)
It was noted that the loss of a newspaper had added to the workload of businesses, community organisations, schools and all levels of government as they attempt to spread their own messages. This meant carrying the logistical burden of producing their own hardcopy or online newsletters to try to inform their own niche communities about relevant activities. For example, Alice Springs Town Council had begun publishing a monthly information sheet called Council Connect. These concerns resonate with research undertaken into the impact of no local masthead in the outback mining town of Lightening Ridge, which found volunteers had taken on the role of news gathering and information sharing on top of their existing roles and occupations, and this was irregular and difficult to maintain (Magasic and Hess, 2021). Interview participants highlighted the need for a central, coordinated source of reliable information. While social media was considered the most cost-effective way to fill the void, it had its limitations, as this participant highlights: We do all the social media to reach who we need to. I think it's effective to a certain extent. But it only goes to the people that follow you. All the algorithms and all that, you know, you only get to see what they think you should see. (Participant #21, interview with author, 2023)
Attitudes towards the establishment of a new newspaper
The establishment of the Mparntwe Alice Springs Community Foundation and resurrection of a local newspaper was overwhelmingly supported by almost all interview participants who felt the town was ‘lacking glue’ (personal correspondence, 2024). There was a sense of loss that the former newspaper the Centralian Advocate had helped to construct what might best be described as an ‘imagined’ community (Anderson, 1983), but with its closure information had become increasingly fragmented and there was a reliance on social media content (especially Facebook) to keep up to date with local current affairs. Participants highlighted that, from their experience, people were receiving biased information and there was a plethora of unmoderated and, at times, ‘toxic’ commentary. At the same time, state and national media attention was focused primarily on reporting rising crime in the town. This type of ‘parachute journalism’ (Fondren et al., 2019) and the media's power to construct place identity (Hess and Waller, 2017) was having a negative impact on how Alice Springs was perceived by broader audiences outside the region. Locals felt powerless to counteract it, as this comment from an interview participant suggests: Once the Advocate closed, the NT News covered the key state issues. But any negative story like crime in Alice Springs was blown out of all proportion. It just painted Alice Springs generally in a bad light and Aboriginal people in a bad light. It overlooked positive things that were happening in Alice Springs for the whole community. It's had a negative impact, an all-pervading negativity. (Participant #8, interview with author, 2023) The impact of having no newspaper is huge. There is no way that people can find out what's actually happening around the town that can be trusted and is comprehensive. And a town, a community, needs that. They need to be able to know what's happening with government, all levels of government, with the classified section on births, deaths and marriages. Who's got a lawn sale and all that sort of thing. Sporting as well, because there's a lot of people who play sport in town and there is absolutely no way that you can find out what's happening in sport and what kids are starring in the sporting arena. (Participant #11, interview with author, 2023) Literally no one has really known what's going on in the town for the last three years. The impact of that has meant sections of the community have become very isolated. Elderly people, seniors, just a disengagement of people in what's happening in the town. (Participant #16, interview with author, 2023) And: It's impacted on elections. We had the local government election last year or the year before. They had a really low voter turn-out. People suspected that might have had something to do with having no paper. There was a by-election recently. The same thing happened. People didn't even know about it. (Participant #11, interview with author, 2023) We need objective reporting for a start … and non-biased comment by people from around the place, mainly trusted community members. I think people are being bombarded with ‘it's terrible, it's terrible, it's terrible’ but objective reporting might also make them feel that they don't necessarily have to pick up sticks and head off somewhere else. (Participant #2, interview with author, 2023)
And: We want stories that are not just crime. Life goes on in Alice Springs and I think this is what we should draw our attention to. I think there's some really good stuff going on in this town. We need positive stories, that's been a problem in this town. (Participant #8, interview with author, 2023)
After: perceptions of the Centralian Today
All but two follow-up research participants said they had purchased copies of the printed newspaper in the 12 months after the newspaper began circulating, but there were mixed consumption patterns, with some reading every edition, others purchasing it when they saw it in the supermarket or a café, or reading it for free in their workplace. While participants in the first round of interviews could readily identify the practical, social and political impacts of not having a local newspaper, they found it much harder to pinpoint tangible impacts since it had been operating. Many said it was a more a generalised ‘morale boost’ for the community.
All participants highlighted the Centralian Today's sports and events coverage as outstanding, with one participant commenting that sports coverage was ‘a celebration of Alice's rich diversity on a page’ (personal communication, 2024). This was considered by participants as the type of content that countered negativity in the town, as these comments suggest: A change with some positivity has been welcomed by all the people who look at it. I’ve seen young people flick through it and they go straight to the back, to the sports. They like to see themselves. The sports coverage is just excellent. (Participant #5, interview with author, 2024) And: Socially it's had a real positive impact because you’ve seen photos of our kids, there's photos of the sporting organisations, there's cricket, there's lots of stuff. It's slowed down a bit of that horrendous social media platform stuff we had here. (Participant #19, interview with author, 2024)
Tempering negativity and meeting expectations
All participants said the newspaper had provided an important, alternative source of information beyond social media and that there were positive, constructive stories being told in and for the community since its introduction. Words such as ‘hope’ and ‘positivity’ were consistently used by participants in the interviews, for example: ‘I think there's a lot of delight and positivity about it. People like the good news stories and that brings hope to town’ (personal communication, 2024), and these comments also: I think it's been just a general community boost. I couldn't turn around and say that it's got this particular positive impact or that it's changed government policy. I couldn't say that, but I think, generally, it's a morale boosting type thing, from what I've seen. (Participant #1, interview with author, 2024) And: Action for Alice was seen as something like a necessary evil in some respects, but it wasn't kind of giving community spirit. And ABC always felt, to a certain extent, compromised. That was just a perception of it, even though I think that they do quite a phenomenal job. So, what I think the paper did was provide that kind of cut through. (Participant #5, interview with author, 2024)
There was criticism about a perceived lack of engagement with indigenous issues other than crime and social disorder and a need for a stronger focus on educational activities, especially among school-aged residents. Participants were divided in terms of the overall quality of the newspaper, for example, ‘it does its job, but I wouldn't say high quality’. Other comments included ‘it's middle of the road’, ‘missed opportunity’ and ‘uninteresting and un-inspirational’.
Audience engagement and news leadership a missing thread
The strongest theme that emerged from the follow-up research was a sense of disappointment in the level of leadership, advocacy and audience engagement the local newspaper had adopted on matters of community interest and/or shared concern. To be clear, there was a general view that the newspaper was not politically bias and had been relatively apolitical in its coverage. However, there was an expectation it would actively serve the collective interests of the Alice Springs community. There had been an initial expectation the news outlet would provide an important platform to link community concerns, ideas and solutions with those in positions of authority to enact change at local, state and national levels. For example, one participant suggested that rather than simply reporting crime and violence, the newspaper should ‘try at least … to do something about it’.
Participants also highlighted the importance of investigative and in-depth journalism as a type of community leadership, because a news masthead had the perceived authority and time to ‘dig deeper’ into key issues on behalf of the community. In particular, there was wide concern about a lack of accountability of government funding and services for a range of initiatives and programs, and participants considered the newspaper as central to monitoring this. These comments from participants highlight the point: ‘I want probably more investigative stories, controversial stories [about] politics, [that] is what is definitely needed’ and ‘There's a lack of serious journalism, I’d [rather] see a smaller paper with more thoughtful content’.
The lack of perceived leadership was also linked to the role of the newspaper in facilitating meaningful conversation among community and serving as a barometer for community sentiment and ideas. This was a key objective of the community foundation's ‘constructive communication and conversation’ approach. All participants highlighted a desire for the newspaper to engage in what is understood as engaged, constructive and solutions journalism, bringing people together to discuss issues and form solutions to problems. The role of ‘social connector’ is often associated with local news outlets (see e.g.: Baines, 2012; Bowd, 2021), with a well-functioning newspaper expected to be a conduit for information that connects people to each other, to their location and to the wider world around them. In Alice Springs, the engaged social connector role was also considered important for fundraising and positive community-building activities. For example, one participant highlighted the need to move from profiling stories about individuals to stories about positive programs and activities in the community that included a ‘call to action’ to enable ‘community to help community’: For example, what's going on at the BMX track? I understand there's 15 indigenous kids out there riding BMXs every Friday night instead of walking the streets. And the BMX club is trying to find money to buy some BMXs. That's a wonderful story of the community. They’re the programs we need to hear about. If people can see ideas and want to be inspired and help, then it's [the newspaper] the place to be. (Participant # 20, interview with author, 2024)
Local news presence is considered central to an ‘imagined’ community
The Centralian Today's perceived lack of consistent local presence, investment and connection to Alice Springs was highlighted by many participants. It was noted that while the editor of the publication at the time of the initial and follow up interviews had an understanding of the region as a former local resident, he no longer resided in the area and was based interstate. Issues with journalistic recruitment had further hampered this perceived lack of local connection, with reporters needing time in place to build connections and rapport, especially after relocating from elsewhere. The role of the newspaper's loal photographer, who was especially visible in the community attending sport and cultural events, was highlighted as positive and helped to elevate the newspaper's credibility among audiences. The importance of a small-town news outlet's ability to maintain a physical presence in the locality it serves has long been a taken-for-granted assumption (McAdam and Hess, 2024). This has been challenged in a digital era where cost-cutting measures such as centralisation have left many traditional news outlets under-resourced. This study highlights a need to ensure that physical presence is a constant, and exists in a way that exerts leadership and credibility over time. This comment from a participant highlights the issue: The first couple of journalists that they employed have gone. When you make contacts with journalists you put energy into building a relationship with them. They've been gone for months, and I understand that they don't have a local journalist at all now. They've got a photographer who goes around and takes photos. And I did flip the paper over the other day and he's written a few pretty basic articles, but it's all being managed out of [neighbouring state] South Australia. The editor is sitting in South Australia. (Participant #20, interview with author, 2024)
There was, however, one exception to the general concern about the lack of local engagement: I think people live and work from anywhere in this digital age, so no, it doesn’t really bother me that the editor isn’t local. It's nice he has some type of local connection though. (Participant #7, interview with author, 2024)
Discussion/conclusion
We suggest there are important lessons to be learned from this example of a community foundation supporting – through advertising – the return of a newspaper to a local community. This research project began amidst heightened national media attention on Alice Springs around social disorder and crime. Community leaders interviewed for this study highlighted concerns about what they considered to be unbridled, toxic social media commentary and a fragmented communications environment that did not provide a balance between positive and negative stories or build a sense of community cohesion. It was their hope that the return of a local newspaper would help to rebuild a more reliable and locally relevant news and information environment, one that would allow them to regain a sense of community or, in other words, ‘get their town back’. In this sense, the newspaper would become a new, positive form of ‘Action for Alice’.
The creation of the Centralian Today was considered an overall success in its early months of operation. It has shone the spotlight on, and celebrated, community events and sporting success stories as well as covered local politics and crime as it occurs. High-quality images produced by a local photographer were noted by many. The Today News Group – the company behind the newspaper – has been pleased with the support received from audiences and local and state advertisers. There is a view that the newspaper has tempered negativity and serves an important public good for the community.
However, the high level of expectation has also led to some disappointment. Interview subjects for this project expected a local news outlet to take some leadership on issues by bringing people together in conversation to discuss solutions, generating ‘calls to action’ to support established initiatives and linking them with changemakers to imagine a different future. This helps to build a news outlet's own standing or reputation in a community or what we have termed in academic scholarship as ‘mediated social capital’ (Hess, 2015).
This research provides insight into the role community foundations might play in Australia in supporting local news, especially in areas deemed to be ‘news deserts’ (Gulyas et al., 2023) or vulnerable areas of the news ecology. At a time when local news is increasingly being syndicated or centralised, community foundations can help to ensure funds are directed at their local patch and hence play an integral role in supporting essential services such as news media in any rural and regional setting. Our research found most participants were fully supportive of the Mparntwe Alice Springs Community Foundation's attempts to bring a newspaper to Alice Springs, referring to the initiative as ‘terrific’, ‘amazing’ and a ‘catalyst’ for positive change. Almost all stressed the importance of the newspaper maintaining impartiality – that is, the foundation not having influence on editorial decision making and story selection within the newspaper. This was a factor considered by the foundation and the Today News Group in the initial stages of the partnership, which led to the novel ‘advertising as support’ arrangement.
Many scholars highlight the declining importance of advertising to the future of local news (see: Park et al., 2021; Waisbord, 2019). This study has found otherwise. It is the main revenue source for the Centralian Today, with key advertisers including local businesses, government and government-funded bodies (such as tourism and support agencies), community groups, and the partner community foundation. The content analysis confirms this, but also highlights the noticeable absence of large national companies as advertisers or sponsors, such as mining companies and major retailers. It also highlights the absence of a local Alice Springs real estate guide and poor take up of classified advertising.
Attention must also turn to the accountability of news producers in which the not-for-profit sector seeks to support. In the case of Alice Springs, the community foundation attracted a commercial news company from ‘outside’ the region to provide local news. As highlighted in this report, this has its strengths and limitations. The community foundation itself did not have the professional news expertise, time or desire to establish a sustainable news outlet. While an independent company such as the Today News Group has experience with news production and professionalism, it must also turn a profit, and the size of that profit is not required to be disclosed to the community it represents. The issue of distance was a problem that was noted by interview subjects in Alice Springs. There was concern, for example, that some news producers lived hundreds of kilometres away in another state and changeover of staff made meaningful relationships difficult to develop. Becoming ‘local’ takes time and the Centralian Today is in its infancy. As the newspaper beds down in the community, there is a need to be reflexive and look to fulfil the various important roles local news outlets are expected to play in the towns and cities they serve.
Footnotes
Ethical approval and informed consent statements
This study was approved by the Deakin University Human Research Ethics Committee (approval no. HAE-2023-222) on 3 August 2023.
Funding
The authors disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: This work was supported by a grant from the Mparntwe Alice Springs Community Foundation.
Declaration of conflicting interests
The authors declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.