It’s time to ‘cough it up’ and support community newspapers

Local journalists are calling for advertisers to better support their struggling community newspapers amid the industry’s current upheaval.

Nick Krause is the editor of Times Online, the digital side of the now defunct Howick & Pakuranga Times newspaper, which has recently had its share of financial difficulties.

“We went down the toilet. We had to close our doors three weeks ago.

“Our owner tried to find a buyer. That fell through for whatever reason, and we went into liquidation.”

He says there was an outpouring of public sadness over the announcement of the paper’s closure, but it was support that came too little, too late.

“We need people to back us up with dollars. Cough it up.”

Editor of Times Online Nick Krause says the paper’s closure was inevitable as it struggled to adapt to the new digital climate. Photo: Ben McQueen

According to Krause, it’s the local advertisers that need to step up and support their local papers.

“We service your community. We support you - you support us, man.

“They all miss the paper already, but they won’t support the paper with a couple hundred bucks a month or whatever.”

Bernadette Courtney is the editor in chief of National at Stuff and oversees its community newspapers.

She had seen a similar pattern of public outcry when Stuff had to reduce the frequency of some of its community papers.

“The community gets up and arms and suddenly sort of wakes up and thinks, ‘oh we’ve got this amazing publication sitting on our doorstep that’s giving us local news. We need to support it.’”

Courtney says that the current struggle in New Zealand’s media industry is because a lot of Kiwis take the availability of news for granted.

“A lot of New Zealanders think that the media is there - they don’t have to support it. But they do.

“You wouldn’t walk into McDonald’s and ask for a free burger, you expect to pay for that. So, if you want news, you do need to pay for it now.”

Despite this, Courtney understands that with the cost-of-living crisis, paying for news - particularly community news - is not a high priority for some people.

She says she doesn’t have the “crystal ball” solution to the complex issue of funding, but under Stuff’s model of community paper ownership they are helping to adapt them to a more digital presence.

“What we’ve tried to do is bring technology in.

“To help workflows and make it easier for people like our community papers. We use some automation in terms of the layout of the pages.”

According to Krause, Times Online is going to continue to publish digital news stories.

With its readership of almost 120,000, it has even been approached by Google which pays it for a certain number of stories a day.

Courtney says that despite all the “doom and gloom” she is still optimistic that community news is always going to have a place in New Zealand’s media landscape, whether that’s in print form or not.

“Residents do like to know what’s happening around the corner.

“They don’t often want to get caught up in what’s happening at the Beehive or the Reserve Bank.”