Abstract
State subsidies for the production of newspapers have not been a major issue in the development of the Australian newspaper industry even though the industry has benefited from a variety of direct and indirect forms of government assistance during its 200-year history. Some of the measures sought to assist industry development while others sought to support access to a diversity of news and opinion. While the potential effects of heavy concentration of media ownership on the diversity of news and opinion have been a major preoccupation of Australian policymakers in recent decades, subsidies to the newspaper industry have rarely been an issue of public debate. Nonetheless, a consideration of support to news activities was included in the terms of reference of a federal government-initiated media inquiry in 2011. The inquiry’s report, however, stopped short of recommending newspaper subsidies but did acknowledge the difficulties facing the industry as it grapples with structural changes to the business model that has sustained it for many years.
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Notes
- 1.
The group was managed by Sir Keith Murdoch (father of Rupert).
- 2.
The Australian Financial Review was first published in 1951 and converted to a daily in 1963. The Australian began in 1964 (Kirkpatrick 2012). The Northern Territory News published in Darwin, the Territory’s capital city, is usually not included as a capital city newspaper.
- 3.
A 1999 National Library of Australia (NLA) staff paper reports there were 315 regional non-daily newspapers at the time (NLA 1999). A small number of closures have been reported since.
- 4.
It faces localised competition from a couple of very small cable operators.
- 5.
The Hon Raymond Finkelstein QC was appointed by the Australian Government in September 2011 to conduct an independent inquiry into media and media regulation which presented its report to the government at the end of February 2012. Matthew Ricketson, one of the co-authors of this chapter, was appointed by the government to assist Mr. Finkelstein. The other co-author of this chapter, Franco Papandrea, was a consultant to the Inquiry. The inquiry’s terms of reference included the effectiveness of media codes of practice; impact of technological change media on organisations, quality journalism and production of news and ways to support such activities and strengthening of the independence and effectiveness of the Australian Press Council (Finkelstein 2012).
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Papandrea, F., Ricketson, M. (2013). Australia: State Aid to Newspapers—Not a Priority. In: Murschetz, P. (eds) State Aid for Newspapers. Media Business and Innovation. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-35691-9_8
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