Australia’s population is mostly cloistered into densely populated east coast cities and surrounding areas such as the Sydney basin, Melbourne and South East Queensland (including Brisbane and the Gold Coast). Yet, despite the statistical affinity for urban and suburban life, our national character (if it can be defined) remains rooted in ideas of rurality and the bush. This self-concept was further reinforced by the (admittedly rare) occurence of rural issues taking centre stage in the recent federal election, and especially during the post-election scramble to form government, where three rural independents seemed the key to power. But amongst that outburst of regional sentiment, and within the picture of general journalistic decay, little attention has been paid to how modern stories of Australia’s rural character are constructed and carried in the media. University of Canberra media and communications lecturer Jason Wilson argues in an academic piece that decline in rural media has preceded the present ‘crisis’ in metropolitan and national mainstream media publications. On the ABC’s The Drum, Wilson responded more forcefully to comments of former Fairfax chief Brian McCarthy, who had suggested that his Rural Press division would suffer from the ABC’s attempts to stimulate more rural media production through ABC Open. Wilson’s comments included the following broadside:

Rural Press has done very little with online offerings across its stable, and certainly has shown no signs of wanting to act as a curator of community-derived content, as ABC Open is proposing to do. The average Rural Press site contains a stripped back version of the daily newspaper’s content (so as not to disincentivise purchase of the paper copy) and a rudimentary comment facility. There’s nothing to suggest that Rural Press wants to lead regional communities into a greater engagement with participatory newsmaking

Wilson’s comments here were made in the context of discussing the ABC’s role in the Australian media landscape, but they point to a broader concern about rural media in general. It is a concern I share. In my hometown, I have seen the local newspaper face cutback after cutback to the space available to local stories in favour of advertising. From my brief in-office experience, these reductions were forced from the top by ever-tightening corporate budgets. At the same time, few stories were placed online and Rural Press made no apparent effort to create or facilitate participatory newsmaking within the community. Instead, the company seems intent on controlling its own market share, in contrast to worldwide trends in journalism and news in general. Wilson notes the tendency to assume rural and regional media will be filled by consumer-created content, especially as facilitated by the NBN:

The digital future… here forecasts a spontaneous, bottom-up localism, where citizens will come together to produce news and public affairs content that the mainstream media no longer provide.

However, he questions the merit in this assumption. Instead, rural communities may need stimulation and encouragement beyond technological changes to begin actively producing local stories. Regional communities could do well from adopting a community news approach, where local content is owned and produced by local people, but the development of this would require significant investment, both in finances and time, from those same local people. Until then, the decline of regional mainstream media may continue unabated with almost no adequate replacement.