Subsistence Journalism: Corporate Control and Corporate Change in Queensland Regional Journalism

Abstract

In May 2020, at the height of the first COVID-19 lockdown in Queensland, Australia, the nation’s biggest news organisation, News Corp, announced they were closing many of their regional journals. For much of regional Queensland, the onset of news deserts looked probable until Victorian-based Star News Group filled the void left by News Corp. This paper looks at these changes from the perspective of journalists working for Star newspapers in the Queensland regional centres of Noosa and Gympie—and it reveals the challenges facing community journalism in post-Murdoch regional Queensland. This chapter also analyses the capacity of these news publications to do the kinds of journalism that sustain democracy at the local and regional levels. In doing so, the chapter reveals issues surrounding the sustainability of the publications themselves.