The ABC Open project which was announced by CEO Mark Scott last year. It aims to provide new online coverage of local stories in fifty locations around the country. The ad posted this week by the ABC for producers shows the focus of the initiative:
The ABC Open project will offer regional audiences the chance to participate in ways that have never existed before. It will shine a spotlight on regional Australia through text-based stories, blogs, photography, video, and audio published online and on new platforms. 50 digital jobs have been created to help bring those stories and issues to the world.
It reads to me like a citizen journalism initiative – community focused rather than commercial.
Brian McCarthy, head of Fairfax Media, was reported by Fairfax outlets yesterday as saying that ABC Open could force the closure of some of their regional newspapers.
He says the ABC Open network “threatens to undermine the viability of the excellent service commercial media organisations such as Fairfax Media and Rural Press have provided to regional and rural Australia for decades”.
“I do not believe it is the role of the ABC to disrupt the commercial landscape by building empires with public funds,” Mr McCarthy said in a statement on Friday.
While local and regional newspapers do provide local coverage, my reading of the remit for ABC Open is that it will be far more community driven than what we have seen before. If would be hard for a commercial organisation with shareholder return as their key priority to deliver on this as the ABC could.
While I understand McCarthy’s need to protect his company’s interests, I see the local newspapers and ABC Open as operating in two difference worlds.
I like the part were fairfax is disgusted that the ABC would “disrupt the commercial landscape by building empires with public funds,” hasnt Aust post been doing this for over a decade with stationery and now telco products.
Not so nice when the shoe is on the other foot and it isnt just small business the govt protected operations go after.
Go cry me a river.
Well it’s about time someone shook up some of the regional press. I have lived in regional Australia for most of my life and it is about time someone gave regional papers a reason to try new approaches. I don’t think it will be the end of them just a reason for them to adjust to a changing rural landscape (figuratively). Good initiative from the ABC.