Following our post about seven sub editors getting the chop at the NT News (below ) because the paper is now going to be mainly made up at the Adelaide Advertiser, one of our Adelaide contacts came forth with an unusual insight into the demise of the Adelaide News, the last afternoon tabloid in Australia .
When there was speculation that Rupert Murdoch would close the paper , several somewhat unworldly SA reporters firmly stated he would never close the paper because of his father’s association with the paper and the fact Rupert had worked on it as a young man .
When there was speculation that Rupert Murdoch would close the paper , several somewhat unworldly SA reporters firmly stated he would never close the paper because of his father’s association with the paper and the fact Rupert had worked on it as a young man .
It was pointed out that in 1985 Murdoch changed his nationality from Australian to American to allow him to buy a US TV station , the reporters still insisted that the Adelaide News would survive. Like another Adelaide product , the Collins class submarine, it disappeared beneath the media waves on March 27, 1992.
The print media in Australia is under pressure from the new extra digital TV channels ( is it three or four or more in Darwin alone? ) and other competitors , radio being another . The ABC’s Inside Business recently revealed that the big advertisers are putting the squeeze on papers to justify their audited circulation figures and rates.
The move to make up NT News pages in Adelaide is seen as a way to cut expenses and combat that rising competition.
Are the Cairns Post and Townsville Bulletin , part of the Murdoch chain, comparable to Darwin, to be part of that centralised production? Centralising production is part of the global process of homogenising news . In the process, newspapers tend to become blander and sources of public information and expression become fewer . If News Corp is engaged in heavy cost cutting ,what then the future of The Australian seeing it has never been able to tap at any stage those advertising rivers of gold?
Are the Cairns Post and Townsville Bulletin , part of the Murdoch chain, comparable to Darwin, to be part of that centralised production? Centralising production is part of the global process of homogenising news . In the process, newspapers tend to become blander and sources of public information and expression become fewer . If News Corp is engaged in heavy cost cutting ,what then the future of The Australian seeing it has never been able to tap at any stage those advertising rivers of gold?
