Aussie papers go digital, downsize amid double whammy of Google-Facebook and COVID

Australia’s largest newspaper publisher, News Corp., announced on Thursday that most of its suburban and regional mastheads in the united states will become digital-only the following month as a result of pandemic.

News Corp. Australasia executive chairman Michael Miller described the shift that will take effect on June 29 as significant and said jobs will be lost. He did not say how many.

“COVID-19 has impacted the sustainability of community and regional publishing. Regardless of the audiences of News Corp.’s digital mastheads growing more than 60% as Australians considered trusted media sources during the peak of the recent COVID-19 lockdowns, the decline of print advertising spending which contributes nearly all our revenues, has accelerated,” Miller said in a statement.

Many News Corp. print mastheads were challenged and the double impact of the coronavirus lockdown plus tech platforms such as for example Google and Facebook not remunerating local publishers for content made the mastheads unsustainable, Miller said.

These initiatives are significant. They will involve fundamental changes to how we operate our business nevertheless they are essential,  Miller said.

Some mastheads, or newspaper titles, would disappear, but their news will be published in regional sections of other mastheads, he said.

News Corp. suspended printing businesses for 60 local papers in Australia in early April as advertising earnings vanished as a result of pandemic.

The federal government has announced that Google and Facebook will be required to purchase news content in Australia.

The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission, the trade watchdog, will release in July draft rules for the platforms to pay fair compensation for the journalistic content siphoned from press.