Media cancer reaches NSW North Coast

News Corp has now acquired a 14.99 per cent interest in APN News & Media which owns a number of print and digital newspaper publications on the NSW North Coast and elsewhere in Australia and New Zealand, including some of this region's oldest mastheads such as The Daily Examiner and The Northern Star.

This percentage of ordinary shares not only makes it a substantial shareholder, it is likely to place News Corp (and Murdoch family interests) in the top three* shareholders in this media company.

There is no way of softening this - basically any hope of editorial independence and unbiased reporting continuing into the future has all but disappeared for most of our local media, along with the possibility of retaining any genuine local viewpoint on contentious social, environmental or political issues.

Two years from now what newsagent delivery vans throw onto people's front lawns will more than likely be a poor man's version of that Sydney rag The Daily Telegraph.

News Corp Builds Its Investment in APN News and Media, 18 March 2015

* The Daily Examiner reported on 19 March that News Corp was in fact now APN's largest shareholder.

The Daily Examiner: methinks it stinks!

The Daily Examiner, 31 December 2014, Page 3:

While the voting numbers varied between our online poll and votes lodged directly with The Daily Examiner, we decided to weight these views differently because many online voters were not buyers of our newspaper.

We're pleased to be supporting a majority of Australian-made cartoons - including Zanetti on our opinion pages - and we look forward to your feedback.

On the same day Bill Dickinson took to Facebook to express his displeasure - thereby joining a growing band of valley residents unhappy with a range of APN News & Media’s decisions:

Bill of course could have added that there is only one regular opinion page in the old Egg Timer and that page only carries one political cartoon per issue, despite the liberal use of plurals in The Daily Examiner quote at the top of this post.

He could have also pointed out that The Daily Examiner has an ePaper which is purchased online.

As far as the financial integrity of those who lodged votes directly - its an open secret that traditional print copies of the newspaper are often shared between households (sometimes between up to half the houses in a short street) with only one person being the purchaser, so there is no guarantee that the person voting directly in Grafton or by mail actually paid for the newspaper.

Fans of Ginger Meggs, stand up and be counted

APN newspapers has informed its readers that it will be reducing the number of cartoons it publishes from six to three.

As a mighty big fan of Ginger Meggs this blogger will be casting a vote to have Ginger be one of the three that continues to appear.

All fans of Ginger Meggs are called on to visit an APN website and give our home-grown little mate their vote.

Vote here here here here  here  here by Saturday November 29.

Image from  gingermeggs.com

Standard and Poor's has downgraded APN News & Media's debt credit rating

An interesting snippet from the AUSTRALIAN NEWSPAPER HISTORY GROUP NEWSLETTER No. 79 October 2014:

79.3.4 APN (2): Rating downgraded

Ratings agency Standard and Poor’s has downgraded APN News & Media’s debt credit rating after the media company canned a proposed offering of senior unsecured notes in the US bond market (Australian, 18 September 2014). S&P has lowered the publishing, outdoor advertising and radio company’s debt to BB from BB+. APN was expected to use the proceeds from the $US250 million ($270m) issue to repay its outstanding debt and to cancel commitments under a bank facility of $630m.

A BB rating is assigned when a company’s creditworthiness and ability to meet financial commitments is deemed to face “major ongoing uncertainties or exposure to adverse business, financial, or economic conditions”. APN abandoned the offering citing unsatisfactory “terms and conditions”, and said the decision would not impact debt level or maturities. The company recently entered into a new facility with a syndicate of domestic and international banks, and was carrying net debt of $482.6m as of June 2014. The debt downgrade comes as APN considers strategic options for APN New Zealand, which operates publishing assets including the New Zealand Herald as well as The Radio Network and the digital business GrabOne. APN has retained Grant Samuel to assist in the process.

APN News & Media Limited (APN) still cost cutting in regional media division and now advancing the aims of the Newman Government

Sadly, regional newspapers in the APN News & Media Limited (APN) stable are still in the grip of a cost cutting regimen:

Resilient local trading conditions assisted by a strong real estate pillar helped Australian Regional Media (ARM) to deliver an improved performance.

Revenue was down 8% to $99.0 million, with EBITDA down 17% to $10.5 million.

Consistent with the broader publishing industry, ARM was negatively impacted by the weak agency market, with National revenues down 20%. ARM continues to focus on connecting with its audience and has grown its weekly aggregate audience by 8% to 1.4 million since the beginning of the year.

ARM continues to effectively manage its cost base and delivered year on year cost savings of $6 million in the half.

[HALF YEAR FINANCIAL REPORT AND APPENDIX 4D:APN News & Media Limited and controlled entities for the period ended 30 June 2014]

Rather worryingly, in Queensland APN became involved in furthering the political aims of an increasingly unpopular government of the day, by participating in a skewed 'community consultation' campaign conducted by the Newman Government, the Strong Choices questionnaire.

The Guardian 23 April 2014:

If you're not interested in raising taxes, reducing services or selling off assets, then the Queensland government doesn't want to hear from you.

Queensland treasurer Tim Nicholls has declared the government's “Strong Choices” campaign a success after the first week of operation, with more than 16,000 people making submissions through the Strong Choices website on how to reduce government debt.

Using an interactive questionnaire, people can suggest raising taxes, selling or leasing state assets, and reducing government services to reduce government debt.

In a statement on launching the site, which is part of a $6m campaign, Nicholls said the aim was to canvass Queenslanders’ views.

“This unprecedented level of community consultation and communication will enable every Queenslander who wants to take part to have the opportunity to provide detailed feedback on exactly what their priorities for the state are and to make their own choices as to how they would reduce the state’s debt,” he said.

However, the questionnaire does not allow you to submit your results if you choose not to raise taxes, cut services or sell off assets. If you complete each page but don't reduce the debt by the approved amount, you're unable to continue on to submit your results and the section on prioritising government spending.

Screenshot of the error message on the Strong Choices site.

This ensures any responses collated by the Queensland government will only include those who agree with the premise that the debt must be reduced to between $50bn and $55bn, skewing the results.....

Not content with manipulating the range of possible choices respondents had, the survey also apparently botched a graph:

The graph used on the site also emphasises the “unsustainable” range of debt, as it mixes two different axis increments – the “sustainable” section increases in lots of $10bn, whereas the unsustainable section increases in lots of $5bn, and has a greater distance between tick marks.

Brisbane-based software developer James Ottaway posted this new version of the graph to Twitter, demonstrating how it would look with a consistent axis:

Closely aligning newspaper mastheads with the Liberal-Nationals coalition is not a way to increase newspaper readership and boost profitability one would have thought and, is a move more akin to News Corp's business model which sees The Australian losing money hand-over-fist year in and year out since 2008.

With The Canberra Times revealing this week that; Operating losses at The Australian widened from $19.3 million to ­$27.1 million against a budgeted loss of $7.56 million, according to the last weekly internal operating accounts for 2012-13. Revenue tumbled from $135 million to $108 million, versus a budgeted $133 million.

APN Newspapers: spot the fast disappearing news content

The Northern Star newspaper must have a death wish, because wall-to-wall advertorials replacing news content on "Local News" pages in its issues is not a good look and won't encourage readers to handover their money for a copy of this 138 year-old paper.

It's 155 year-old stablemate, The Daily Examiner appears to have a similar urge to alienate readers by filling pages with thinly disguised advertising. However, at least this newspaper placed this particular example in the business section.

* Thanks to Clarrie Rivers for supplying these e-paper snaphots

This week's 'Spot the Difference'

Due to overwhelming demand, NCV provides readers with this week's copy of APN's competition.

Remember, entries should be sent to your local APN production. Clarence valley readers can send their entries to the The Daily Examiner.

1. APN's effort

2. GoComics

Images from The Daily Examiner (digital edition, 18/1/14) and GoComics.com

Spot the difference

Readers of APN newspapers, including The Daily Examiner, are very excited because the publications are running their "Spot the Difference" competition again. 

Here's DEX's effort (Saturday 11/1/2014) :

And here's GoComic's version:

Readers' entries can be sent  to DEX's editor at newsroom@dailyexaminer.com.au

Images from DEX digital edition and Gocomics.

Okay, it's school holidays ....

... so who let the kids loose at APN?

Climatology 101 sees students provided with locations' air pressure readings and then requires them to prepare synoptic charts that involves joining places of equal air pressure - the lines drawn are called isobars.

Seems some bright spark at APN is doing a bit of in-house child minding during the school holidays. Well, that's the conclusion this reader arrived at after reading The Daily Examiner's weather reports lately. The evidence? Look at the weather maps (below) that appeared in The Examiner this week.

Here's DEX's map for Friday it (appeared on Thursday January 9):

And here's the BOM's map:

Need more evidence?

Here are more efforts provided by APN in DEX this week.

Since when have isobars been drawn using a ruler, and thus appearing as straight lines? 

Seems someone at APN gave their kids new pencils and rulers for Christmas and headed them in the direction of the weather page.

Images from The Daily Examiner (digital edition) and Bureau Of Meteorology.

APN gets a jump-start on news events

At 6.45pm Eastern Daylight Saving Time on Monday 25th November APN websites carried tomorrow's news.

What's next? Can readers look forward to seeing tomorrow's race results today? The punters would certainly look forward to seeing them.

Read tomorrow's news today here.

Today's APN reading competition

A court report appearing in an APN newspaper today makes one wonder what was deleted from the report. Readers who work out the answer might forward it to the editor of The Northern Star The Daily Examiner.

NCV suspects the editor probably has some prizes for readers who provide the correct answer. (Hint: find ****)

NCV apologises to The Northern Star for having previously stated that it carried the blooper. Having seen its print edition NCV acknowledges that the Star doesn't carry the blooper; however, the piece which was written by a Star journalist appears in the Examiner (see below) with the colourful language.

Image credit: APN

Spot the Difference - today's grey matter testing material

NCV has had reports that versions of Ginger Meggs appearing in APN publications, including The Daily Examiner, are being used in schools and retirement villages to test the grey matter of both the young and old.

1. Ginger Meggs in today's Examiner

2. Jason Chatfield's Ginger Meggs as it appears at gocomics

 

A couple of wags have noticed that APN's version appears a day or two (or three) after the real version appears elsewhere.They suggested NCV provides an advance copy of the Ginger Meggs that is scheduled to appear in the following day's APN productions. They reckon they can work out what APN's edited version will look like. Well, that's food for thought.

Let's give APN another chance to get its house in order and fix up this dreadful situation. Over to you, APN!

'Letter from a Terrorist' sent to APN News and Media Chairman Peter Cosgrove

According to Independent Australia posting on 14 October 2013, this letter set out below was sent over a fortnight ago.

Given the relentless cost cutting that APN News and Media has undertaken in recent years, I am inclined to believe that part of this 27 year-old former journalist's complaint concerned with hours being routinely worked by staff on regional newspapers and lack of work-life balance.

This is supported by a comment under the post from another former APN employee living in the Northern Rivers region; I can testify my workplace at an APN regional newspaper was full of weary, broken down people who did a tremendous job under an uncontrollable workload that got heavier with each absence or resignation. The ones my age were counting the days to retirement. The young often returned to the office ashen-faced after being sent to a gruesome car accident or similar. Everyone’s dreams wilted.

While another remarked; Entirely validating – I want to buy former fellow employee #133,332 a beer, if he’d email me.

As for the allegations concerning company spying, I leave that for readers to evaluate.

Letter From A Journalist To APN News & Media's Board Chairman

APN Whistleblower Policy here.