Regional media supported, how about CALD media?

Australian Community Media was awarded more than $10m by the federal government to continue publishing its stable of more than 100 regional newspapers through the pandemic, but even before the grant deed was signed it was closing or scaling back titles.

The company, which bought Rural Press group in 2018, owned 138 regional newspapers before the Covid-19 induced downturn.

By April 2020, ACM had announced the suspension of many of its regional mastheads. Its 14 daily papers continued, but many country towns were left without a local newspaper.

The drastic measures by ACM and other regional media companies prompted the federal government to respond with $50m under the Public Interest News Gathering (Ping) grant scheme.

Announcing the fund on 29 June 2020, the communications minister, Paul Fletcher, said the grants were to help regional publishers sustain public interest journalism in the face of sharp falls in advertising revenue due to the pandemic.

News Corp, a major publisher of regional newspapers, decided not to apply for a grant and took many of its publications to digital only. But ACM, which bought Rural Press group in 2018, applied and received $10.46m.

Of ACM’s 138 publications, 86 were suspended during the pandemic. But a freedom of information request by the Guardian has revealed that even before the first payment was made, ACM was backing off plans to resume printing many of its titles.

A spreadsheet sent to the department revealed ACM’s detailed plans. ACM said it would return 23 titles in full; a further seven would be published less frequently – once a week – and 12 would become digital only. The rest were closed and were presumably not eligible for Ping grants.

The heavily redacted documents show that ACM’s grant was reduced to $10.46m as a result of these decisions, though they provide little clarity on how much ACM lost or the methodology used by the department to account for the reduced frequency or a digital return only.

In late August 2020 the department wrote: “Returning suspended mastheads to operation and to print is a condition of the PING grant agreement and reductions will impact the final grant offer (note the methodology is still to be determined).”

By September it had concluded that ACM would have its grant reduced based on the reduction in revenue on each publication compared with the projected revenue if it had continued as a print product.

“This approach would also apply if a grantee moves a print publication to digital,” one document says. “In the instance where the frequency of publication is reduced the grant amount is to be reduced by the decrease in frequency.”

The managing director of ACM, Tony Kendall, said more papers would have closed without the grants.

/  Tony Kendall acm

“The Ping grant has enabled ACM to keep more mastheads in operation than originally foreshadowed in our 2020 grant application.” Further closures have followed since the grant deed was signed in November 2020.

The Nambucca Guardian and Bellingen Shire Courier, both slated to return as digital-only publications according to the documents provided to the department, have not been active since April 2021.

The Nyngan Observer, also slated to become digital-only under the grant, now diverts to the Dubbo Daily Liberal’s site, while the Wingham Chronicle diverts to the Manning River Times.

Others, such as the Crookwell Gazette and the Yass Tribune, appear to be produced in a central hub and have little, if any, local content.

The documents do not record the department’s reactions to these further closures or whether it has demanded that ACM return any part of its grant.

Kendall said ACM had maintained its journalist numbers under the Ping grant.

“ACM is still working on its final report regarding the grant but does not expect to have to return any money,” he said. The company also received jobkeeper, but because it is not a publicly listed company it has not had to disclose the amount. “It saved our business,” Kendall said.

In the past 12 months ACM has also announced the closure of three of its four print sites, in Canberra, Murray Bridge and Ballarat, after striking a print deal with rival News Corp to continue printing some titles. The presses are being sold, raising further concerns about the long-term future of ACM’s regional empire.