This week marks the launch of a three-year philanthropic program that will give regional and rural communities a voice, help young journalists break into the industry, strengthen independent rural newspapers and fund research into sustainable business models. The Rural Network has been funded by a $1.37 million gift from Vincent Fairfax Family Foundation (VFFF) and developed in collaboration with Guardian Australia and University of Technology Sydney (UTS).
This gift will assist Guardian Australia with building a network of regional contributors and employing five UTS graduate journalists over the life of the project, based in rural communities and tasked with reporting on local stories.
The need has come about by the major decline in rural and regional news. Between 2008 and 2019, 194 rural and regional publications closed and in the past five years, more than 3000 journalists lost their jobs. COVID-19 has escalated this decline.
Research by UTS’s Centre for Media Transition will examine models which might support a sustainable regional news presence in mainstream media.
“This project will build a network of writers who know their regions. The Rural Network will nurture local talent, share local stories and build a bridge between metropolitan and country communities. It will scrutinise rural and regional policy seriously,” said Gabrielle Chan (pictured), rural and regional editor of Guardian Australia.
“I’m delighted that Gabrielle is leading this project. There is no more authoritative voice in Australia on these issues. I’m also very pleased that the VFFF and UTS were willing to collaborate with us as we set up this new approach to reporting. I think it has great potential to allow us to cover stories we otherwise would not, with insight and perspective of lived experience and local knowledge,” Guardian Australia’s editor Lenore Taylor said.
The Rural Network’s first appointed graduate, Natasha May, will work from the Gilgandra Weekly’s newsroom, once lockdown restrictions permit. May will cover stories from the region for Guardian Australia’s rural network, as well as contribute to the Gilgandra Weekly’s local news coverage one day a week, as directed by the independent publication’s editor, Lucie Peart.
The Centre for Media Transition at UTS will publish its first Annual Rural and Regional Media Report in September 2022 and has appointed Prue Clarke, journalist and founder of New Narratives to bring her vast international experience to the project.
“There’s been widespread acknowledgment that the decline in regional media news outlets is damaging to those communities. But it is also damaging to the national conversation. Social cohesion in part depends on all Australian communities having the opportunity to be heard,” said Professor Monica Attard, Co-Director of Centre for Media Transition at UTS.