Nine Entertainment has announced it will cease printing newspapers in Tasmania, marking another contraction in Australia's shrinking regional media landscape. The decision leaves Tasmania increasingly dependent on digital-only news as production costs make print editions 'no longer sustainable' across much of regional Australia.
Tasmania is becoming a news desert in real time. When major publishers abandon print, regional communities lose accountability journalism - and that's exactly when local government corruption and dysfunction thrives. This is democracy infrastructure crumbling, not just business optimization.
Nine's announcement, reported by the ABC, affects multiple mastheads across the state. The company cites declining print circulation, rising production costs, and the shift to digital consumption as reasons for the decision. Those are all real factors, but they don't capture the democratic cost of what's being lost.
Print newspapers serve communities that digital often doesn't reach. Older Australians who rely on print for news. Regional areas with poor internet connectivity. People who can't afford digital subscriptions or devices. When print disappears, these communities lose access to news and local accountability reporting.
Tasmania has already seen massive media contraction. The Mercury in Hobart has shrunk from a substantial newsroom to a skeleton staff. Regional papers have closed or gone digital-only. Commercial radio provides headlines but limited depth. The ABC maintains some presence, but it's been hollowed out by budget cuts.
What fills the gap when professional journalism withdraws? Often nothing. Local councils make decisions with no media scrutiny. Planning corruption goes unreported. Community issues don't get covered. The information environment becomes dominated by Facebook groups, rumor, and whatever politicians choose to release.
Mate, this matters. Regional journalism holds local power to account. When it disappears, bad things happen - corruption thrives, planning gets captured, public money gets wasted. Tasmania deserves better.
The business model for regional newspapers has collapsed. Advertising revenue that once funded newsrooms now goes to Google and Facebook. Circulation has dropped as readers move online. Printing and distribution costs have increased. Publishers can't make the numbers work.
But newspapers were never purely commercial enterprises. They provided a public service - accountability journalism, community information, civic infrastructure - that happened to be bundled with a commercial product. When the commercial model fails, the public service disappears too, and there's no market mechanism to replace it.
Digital-only publishing is cheaper to produce but harder to monetize. Subscription numbers for regional digital news are typically low - people don't pay for online local news the way they paid for print. Advertising rates are terrible compared to print. The economics don't support the same journalism capacity.
Nine's decision follows similar moves by other publishers. News Corp has consolidated regional printing. Australian Community Media has closed numerous titles. The trend is clear: print is dying in regional Australia, and digital isn't replacing it adequately.
The policy response has been minimal. Some government advertising support for regional media. Limited funding for public interest journalism. Nothing approaching the scale needed to maintain news coverage across regional Australia.
Other countries have done better. Canada provides tax credits for journalism employment and digital subscriptions. France subsidizes newspaper delivery and provides financial support for print media. Norway has direct subsidies for newspapers serving small communities.
Australia has mostly treated regional media collapse as a market outcome to be accepted rather than a democratic crisis to be addressed. The result is vast areas with minimal professional journalism, where local accountability depends entirely on whether someone bothers to volunteer their time investigating issues.
The ABC's role becomes even more critical as commercial media withdraws. But the ABC has also faced funding cuts and staff reductions. Its regional presence has shrunk. While it remains the most reliable news source in many areas, it can't fill the gap left by collapsed commercial media.
Tasmania is small enough that statewide issues get some coverage. But local council news in Burnie or Launceston or smaller towns? Planning disputes in regional areas? Local corruption and mismanagement? Much of this will go unreported without print newspapers maintaining some journalistic presence.
The generational divide matters too. Older Tasmanians who relied on print newspapers are being told to go digital, but many lack the skills, devices, or connectivity to do so comfortably. They're being cut off from news and community information without adequate alternatives.
Digital-only publishing also changes how news is consumed. Print newspapers had permanence - they sat around, got passed along, could be returned to. Digital news is ephemeral, scrolled past, forgotten. The civic function of newspapers - providing a shared information base for communities - doesn't translate easily to digital.
Nine's decision is rational from a business perspective. Print is expensive, circulation is falling, the economics don't work. But rationality at the corporate level creates crisis at the societal level. Democracy requires informed citizens, and regional Australia is increasingly uninformed about what local power is doing.
The question is whether Australia recognizes regional journalism as infrastructure worth preserving, or accepts its disappearance as inevitable market evolution. Other democracies have made different choices. Australia can too, if there's political will.
For now, Tasmania joins the growing list of places where print newspapers are history. The digital future might work for Sydney and Melbourne, but for regional Australia, it increasingly looks like an information desert with occasional oases of underfunded, understaffed digital outlets trying to cover areas that once supported multiple newsrooms.
That's not progress. It's abandonment.
