Over the phone, 16-year-old Jack Ward could easily be mistaken for 25.
It’s the kind of maturity which has no doubt been forged by crushing responsibility—which in Jack’s case, is the weight of being the only local reporter on the ground after the closure of Victoria’s second oldest newspaper, The Ararat Advertiser.
Filling the void left by a 163-year-old paper is no easy task. Since the first edition was printed in a tent in the middle of a muddy gold field in 1857, The Advertiser has continued to publish through wars, natural disasters and the Great Depression.
The Ararat Advertiser offices side by side. (Photo (left) by The Ararat Advertiser and (right) Google Streetview 2020)
But after being beaten down by the transition to digital news, COVID-19 finally brought the bi-weekly paper to its knees. On April 20, Australian Community Media suspended all print editions of its non-daily newspapers—a decision which forced The Advertiser to close.
“After The Advertiser’s suspension, my podcast was the only source of local news in Ararat for a couple of weeks, and I had a huge uptake in listeners,” Jack says.
Jack explains that his weekly podcast—Ararat’s Latest—began as a hobby a few years ago. But after The Advertiser’s closure, he inadvertently became the only local reporter on Ararat soil, a task he took on earnestly.
“We have a community of over 8,000 people who are missing out on local stories. The council’s not being held accountable for what they’re doing, and there’s critical local information people are missing out on. I try to cover that.”
Front page, The Ararat Advertiser, January 3, 1914. (Photo by: Trove)
The Ararat community lapped it up. Over the next two weeks, Jack’s podcast received more listeners than it ever had, and his efforts to revive local journalism were widely covered in national media.
But as a lone high-schooler, Jack could only cover so much.
“I use local connections to uncover stories. But for more controversial topics it’s often difficult to get access to that information,” Jack says.
Former editor of The Ararat Advertiser, Jessica Grimble, agreed. She told the ABC in April that although she believed Jack did great work, it was impossible for him to do it alone.
“The town does deserve to have professional adult journalists who are reporting the news because there is obviously a very different perception that comes with life skills and maturity,” she said.
Perhaps Craig Wilson heard her call. Because two weeks later, a new paper stepped up to the plate.
New paper on the block
On May 1, the first edition of the brand-new paper—The Ararat Advocate—went to print.
Craig Wilson, the publisher of The Pyrenees Advocate, saw the need for a new hyper-local paper in the Ararat market and employed a small team to make it happen—including Jack Ward.
“The first week The Advocate launched it was a free paper and it sold out. The second edition had 1800 copies printed and it sold out too. So that just shows the community really rallying behind the paper and its local focus,” Jack says.
Jack Ward working on his podcast, Ararat’s Latest. (Photo by: Jack Ward)
Mr Wilson said his plan was to publish the paper until the end of June before reassessing its viability. But with the way things are going, it looks like the new paper might be here to stay.
“Tomorrow, we put out our fourth edition, we’ve got a new Ararat based staff member starting Monday and hopefully we’ll soon have an office in central Ararat,” Mr Wilson wrote on The Advocate’s Facebook page.
Five-time mayor of Ararat, Cr Gwenda Allgood, couldn’t be happier about the work The Ararat Advocate was doing.
“I have people calling me up every week and asking me where I can get it—because it just went out the door so quickly. It’s great for the Ararat community,” Cr Allgood says.
“As you get older and as you get to love your community, you love to read about the babies, the deaths, the marriages—especially since we can’t attend in person at the moment. So local journalism is vital at the moment since we’re locked at home and we want to know what’s happening in Ararat.”
Cr Allgood said The Advocate was doing the kind of journalism that The Advertiser hadn’t had the resources to do for some time.
“We can buy the local Herald Sun—we know that—but we want the local knowledge and the local stories. We’re enjoying that right now with the new paper.”— Cr Gwenda Allgood (Photo by: Ararat Rural City Council)
“It [The Advertiser] lost its heart, they were publishing stories that weren’t focused on Ararat and were coming from further up the Wimmera.
“The one local journalist was doing the best she possibly could but there’s only so much you can do on your own.”
That “one local journalist” was JessieAnne Gartlan, who had been working at The Advertiser for two years before being told by ACM she would be stood down until the end of the financial year.
Although she wasn’t allowed to comment on the status of The Advertiser, she said she had started work at another start up paper, The Horsham Times, which is set to launch on May 29.
“At this point I’m fulfilling a four-week role as lead journalist for the paper, since I don’t know what will happen with the Advertiser,” Jessie says.
Hope on the horizon for regional papers
Although the future of The Ararat Advertiser remains uncertain, the coronavirus crisis has demonstrated how vital local journalism is to regional communities.
Ararat continues to rally around Jack, The Advocate and the spirit of innovation which is keeping grassroots, public interest journalism alive in this precarious media environment.
“Kids in country areas think that they can’t do these things, but they really can. Jack and the new paper truly have the whole community at heart,” Cr Allgood says.
As the fight to save regional journalism continues all over Australia, Jack remains optimistic that due to the community’s effort, Ararat may be one town to come out of this crisis with two local papers instead of one.
“There might be a bit of friendly competition between the papers when The Advertiser returns,” Jack says.
(Featured image: Jack Ward holds up the first edition of The Ararat Advocate published on May 1. Photo by: Jack Ward via Twitter)
