In 2021, the CMT received a grant from the Vincent Fairfax Family Foundation (VFFF) to examine the conditions challenging rural and regional media and what conditions would need to exist for metro-based news outlets to develop a greater appetite for running news and information from the regions. CMT has been examining how metropolitan news outlets engage with regional news content, and what reporting needs to be coming out of the challenged regional media ecosystem to attract metro media editors.
We have been surveying the flow of regional news into metro news outlets, as well as seeking out regional news start-ups to examine how difficult or otherwise, the environment is for them. As part of this project, we have also comprehensively mapped the state of play of regional news media.
CMT is working in partnership with Guardian Australia, which is building a rural reporting network with funding from this project. As part of the partnership, we have been able to place UTS journalism students and graduates in one-year reporter positions in regional Australia. So far, we have sent students to Gilgandra, Deniliquin and Cowra in New South Wales, and Townsville and Warwick in Queensland. That has been successful for Guardian Australia and particularly, for our students. In our first report we published a reflection from our Gilgandra based student and in our second report we published reflections from our students who were based in Deniliquin and Townsville.
CMT published its first report in November 2022, its second in November 2023 and the third in 2024. Please click on the thumbnails below for a summary of our findings and the reports.
