Featured image: Yamba, NSW by Armistej via Wikipedia – Creative Commons 3.0.
Proudly owned and staffed by locals since 1994, the Clarence Valley Independent was, at its peak, delivered to every household in the Northern Rivers’ Clarence Valley, one of the largest council areas in New South Wales.
The Independent’s editor and owner John Warden recalled a time when local contractors and even school bus drivers were hired to deliver papers to the many remote communities of the Northern Tablelands, such as Tyringham, Dundurrabin and Ebor.
“At one stage in the paper’s history, it was delivered to every single population centre – if a town had a population of 20 people, it got there,” Warden said.
But, like many regional newspapers across Australia, the Independent has ceased printing its weekly edition for the foreseeable future, in response to the overwhelming economic pressures mounted by the CoVID-19 pandemic.
The Independent had successfully maintained its community focus for almost a quarter-century, but as Warden said, the years had seen business getting “tighter and tighter”.
“We’ve had to pull in the belt. At one stage we had a staff of about 30, I think we’d be down to about 15 now. We’ve gone on our merry way, and tried to make a living out of it.”
The Clarence Valley Independent’s core staff in front of their Yamba office. Photograph courtesy of the Clarence Valley Independent
The paper, which relies solely on advertising revenue from local businesses, community groups and sports organisations, suffered a near-fatal blow on the weekend of March 20, when Prime Minister Scott Morrison announced Australia’s imminent lockdown.
“Overnight we lost our advertisers, literally overnight. One week we were fine, the next we couldn’t release the paper,” Warden said.
Digital transformations
The free weekly is one of the rare regional publications managing a transition to digital with grace, boasting active Facebook and Twitter profiles and a sleek website, which hosts a free digital edition of the newspaper every week. There is talk of a news app soon to come.
Their success in the digital realm is puzzling to behold – in the midst of a pandemic, as newspapers across Australia closed their doors and stood down staff, how was such an impressive online transformation possible?
Earlier this year, the Independent had applied to the Regional and Small Publishers Innovation Fund, a government grant to assist with regional publishers’ transition to digitisation.
In an “ironic” turn of events for Warden, their application was approved on the weekend Australia went into lockdown.
“On the Friday we received notification of the success of our grant application to do a major digital transformation of the paper, and on Monday, we had to lay off all our existing staff, and close down.”
Photograph by Nimbusania, via Wikipedia – Creative Commons 3.0
Once the government announced the Job Keeper payment package, Warden was able to re-hire the paper’s staff – made up of two part-time journalists and a handful of advertising and media officers – to work part-time, whilst a team of subcontractors paid for by the grant worked on the newspaper’s digitisation.
Over the years, The Independent has been a crucial link in connecting its community, but with an ageing population – notoriously uninterested in the internet – as their core readership, the loss of the print edition has been felt by the community.
Jo, who works at the NewsXpress newsagency in Yamba, said The Independent was an “essential” newspaper for the community, and it was a “real shame” the print edition had stopped.
“A lot of elderly people here in the shopping centre ask for it because it does have all the news that is important, relevant to them. Of course, when you say it’s gone online, they’re lost because that’s the age group that doesn’t have the internet. It’s definitely being missed,” she said.
“Everybody’s got a story.”
Asked about great moments in the publication’s history, Warden recalled a cold day in July 2018, when a Sea Shepherd ship dropped anchor near Yamba, on its way up the east coast to protest the Adani mine.
The Clarence Valley Independent’s senior journalist Geoff Helisma was invited onto the ship, where he interviewed four men and women of various ages, and then the ship’s captain.
“Confronting the hurtful truth” – an article written by Geoff Helisma, courtesy of the Clarence Valley Independent
“The reality is, the media hadn’t taken any real notice of them, so it was a great privilege for me to go on there,” Helisma said.
“The most striking thing about my time there was that there was a real unity, a real belief among the people I met, in what they were doing. It was part of their identity, and had been there, probably since they were born.”
“Everybody’s got a story, in my view, it doesn’t really matter if they’re well known or not, if you can find the right person, you can tell their story.”
The ship’s captain later said Helisma’s article was his favourite piece of media ever written on the voyage.
“I like the internet, but I want to read it in print.”
Although The Independent’s digital platforms are a nimble asset for the future, Warden is well aware their readership is mostly elderly and middle-aged people, who “don’t get the internet” and “don’t want to get it”.
“I had an elderly woman golfer who rang me up and asked where to get her golf news – at the moment golf’s the only sport still going – we published 14 sports stories in the digital paper this week and every one of them was on golf,” he said.
“When I told her where to find them online, she told me, ‘I like the internet, but I want to read it in print’.”
State Member for Clarence Chris Gulaptis said local papers, like The Independent, are essential for maintaining community connection.
“It’s important to have that vehicle that can connect with the community and the Clarence Valley Independent is able to do that, by reporting on local issues, whether it be sporting events, community events or volunteer organisations. It’s a great way for the community to connect with each other.”
Gulaptis said without publications like the Independent, the community wouldn’t be able to function in a “sustainable” way.
“The citizens are going to miss out on community activities, they won’t get to hear about those events and activities, there will be a hole,” he said.
“Local-local”
Warden said although the media landscape continued to mutate, with advertising revenue plummeting and the readerships of “big city papers” on the decline, “it wasn’t as bad” in the country.
“Country people move at a different pace, and have different values.”
Looking to the future, Warden thinks that all independent papers will remain important to their communities.
“If you look at the big boys, they’re part of conglomerates. A lot of their content is just farmed out by other papers. They’re not local-local,” he said.
“Once upon a time a local paper used to be a local paper, with 100% local content.”
Warden said it wasn’t going to be easy, but they needed to go back to the printed edition of the paper.
“We are just getting blasted by people,” he said.
“It’s incredible because I thought those days were gone, but people are still screaming for the printed edition. So we are going to have to resurrect the printed paper.”
