This looks a little less News, a lot more Corp.

"Online publishing" is not simply a change in how news is distributed, it is hollowing out or completely removing newsgathering on the ground. There is no digital-only model that can sustain a healthy regional/local news presence.

If you look at the history of these mastheads, they were mostly standalone publications acquired over time by News Corp. Many are over 100 years old, curious how many could find a way to sustain themselves into the future if they were still independent.

This isn’t speculative, it’s based on what they have done to date. Leader papers stopped publishing in Melbourne’s west and moved to “online publishing”. In practice this means a Facebook post every fortnight or so sharing a barely relevant Herald Sun story.

That’s just in a suburban setting, where metro dailies can still theoretically cover the biggest ‘local’ stories. In regional areas the local paper still plays an important role and, for all the lip service, there is no way the metro papers will sufficiently cover their issues.