Online journalist Michael West recently predicted the demise of News Corp in a critical online article. He noted that both local and national media was in a state of rapid transformation and News Corp was in diabolical trouble. This was partly because “Rupert’s proliferation of online rivals distribute their content for free via email, Twitter, Facebook and other social media while his newspaper business model relies on chopping down thousands of trees, buying ink, sustaining presses and newsrooms, and carting the newspapers around the country on the back of trucks.”
West noted: “Most of the newspapers will have to shut at some point. They have been losing money for years. Same deal for Nine Entertainment.” Further, that now “Investors are valuing Rupert’s Australian media assets at zero, so unless he and his successors somehow stage a corporate recovery, News Corp is destined for oblivion, along with its grip over government.”
We hope West’s predictions are accurate and from the point of view on climate change that they happen soon. There are some signs that the climate-denying mogul’s grip on governments across Australia is weakening. I have written at length on the criminal opinions of News Corp columnists on a numerous occasions. Also there is the failure of all our mainstream media, including the ABC, to treat global warming as the emergency it is.
Local media is expanding online as the mainstream media falters, and News Corp and Nine are slowly divesting themselves of regional titles or putting them online behind paywalls. Locally ‘Gippsnews’ is on board and doing a similar job to the media giants, but selecting and promoting news of local interest. Likewise, with excellent local content, is the Bass Coast Post, which has been publishing for some time, and the more recent Just Community in South Gippsland. No doubt there are others I am not aware of.
Essentially this news is generated from below and content and control is also in the ‘grass roots’, hence the prominence of climate and climate action in their pages. I have become increasingly reliant on these particular media outlets – one as promoter of my blog and the other two as regular sources of relevant news on climate and renewable energy in our backyard.