It was announced in 2019 (not long after the merger between Fairfax Media and Nine Entertainment Co was completed) that Nine Entertainment Co sold their regional media arm, Australian Community Media (ACM), to a private equity group lead by Anthony Catalano, the former head of the Fairfax Media lifestyle division, which included the Domain real estate brand. ACM includes around 170 titles such as The Newcastle Herald, The Illawarra Mercury, The Canberra Times, and The (Launceston) Examiner.
On the face of this deal, with a new owner, some may have expected some welcome diversification in the newspaper sector. However, ACM is part of the highly commercialised news media sector in Australia. In April 2020, the group announced that it was “suspending the printing of newspapers at four of its printing sites, halting the production of most of its non-daily newspapers. ACM has about 160 titles” (Muller, 2020).
In an attempt to assist in their survival, this former regional arm of Fairfax Media has been cut right back in terms of journalistic resources in the last years: “It’s reasonable to assume even more of this kind of cost-cutting at a time when local journalism is in a very precarious situation from the challenges of a reconfigured global media, including from social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter” (Media Pluralism Project, 2019). Since the beginning of the digital disruption, many companies have experimented with alternative revenue models, such as subscription. However, as with all media groups, Covid-19 has more suddenly impacted this group, and it is likely more titles will be paused, closed, or moved to digital only.
Media pluralism was tested when Seven West Media, a major national broadcaster, merged with regional broadcaster, Prime, in 2019. At the time, there were concerns expressed about media concentration and a reduction of media voices in Western Australia. Both the media regulator, the ACMA, and the competition regulator examined the transaction under broadcasting legislation, but cleared it to proceed in late 2019 (ACMA, 2019).
