Murray Bridge News turns five
Managing editor Peri Strathearn reflects on this publication’s journey from scrappy start-up to number-one news source.
About 50 per cent of new Australian businesses fail in their first five years.
I don’t think I tipped the scales in my favour, either, when I chose to start my business in a regional community of modest size and means, in a collapsing industry, during a pandemic – and, at that time, as the main breadwinner in a family with two young kids.
But the truth is, it was no choice at all.
After all, as I said in the video that launched Murray Bridge News five years ago today: “Right now we need local, reliable information more than ever.”
It needed to happen, so it happened.
A lot more has happened since then.
A couple of weeks ago I was in Melbourne, at a conference run by an industry association I got to help create – Murray Bridge News was LINA member number two.
This evening I’m catching up with a fellow who runs an editorial consultancy out of Singapore.
We’ve earned one-off grants from three international tech platforms, having been handpicked by some of the brightest minds in the industry.
Our screen network is something publishers around the country have looked at copying: a way of reaching tens of thousands of locals every week, including people who might not otherwise follow the news, free of interference from social media algorithms.
A journo who came to us as a uni graduate stayed six months, then stepped straight up into a career with the ABC.
And, of course, we’ve published nearly 3600 stories.
None of that would have happened without a leap of faith five years ago, and without the incredibly generous support of a community that has had our back the whole way.
I’m proud not just that we’re telling stories that would otherwise go untold, that we’re helping locals feel connected to their communities and businesses connect with new customers.
I’m proud that we’re trying things that haven’t been done, and that we’re still here and growing despite flood, drought and economic hardship.
How is Murray Bridge News going, anyway?
Pretty well, really. It’s hard to make money in this industry, especially when we try to keep our prices affordable for both subscribers and advertisers. But at the same time, our email edition reaches five times as many people as the local newspaper. Our screens are viewed more than 50,000 times every week. And we break more local news than any other organisation – a third of the stories we publish have not been told anywhere else.
How do you find stories?
People are great to us. We can’t be everywhere, at all times, so we rely on tip-offs from community members. We also get press releases from governments and other organisations; sometimes we localise national trends or issues; and we try to get out and about to events and meetings as much as we can. But we only publish stories with a local hook. If it’s not relevant to locals, we’re not interested.
How do you make money?
We have three main revenue streams: subscriptions, ads and grants. Subscribers pay our managing editor’s salary – we have many hundreds of kind readers who chip in $8 a month or $80 a year. Local businesses help us meet our staff and publishing costs by publishing sponsored stories, or ads on our email, website or screen network, or in our magazine. And we have been very fortunate with grants over the years, though those are typically one-offs and not an ongoing source of funding. Through LINA, an industry association, we’ve been lobbying for government support for the independent media sector, to make up for the fact that we are simply too small to attract advertising from government agencies or large companies.
Why are some of your stories paywalled?
Our rule is “paywall everything, except most of it”. On one hand, the act of finding information, curating and contextualising it, going to events, interviewing, taking photos, writing and publishing – that’s work, and our staff deserve to be paid for it. But on the other hand, community members deserve to have free access to info about things like upcoming events, health and safety, police investigations, elections and fundraisers. We compromise by making all those stories free to read, and by unlocking our other stories four weeks after they are published. But market research tells us that our subscribers would rather have a hard paywall than a donation-based system.
Why does any of this matter?
Stories create community. Without local news, without people sharing information about what’s happening around them, our communities wouldn’t exist – we’d all just be a bunch of people who happen to live near each other.
Hey Mannum: we’re coming your way
I said at Christmas that we had three big goals for this year: to get election candidates focused on the issues that matter to you, to launch a major new event for the Murraylands, and to expand our coverage.
We’ve surveyed you about those election issues, and will bring the candidates together at a free forum at the Bridgeport Hotel next Monday night – please come along.
We’ve launched the Murraylands Business Awards, and the response has been incredible – almost 800 people have nominated their favourite local businesses so far, if you can believe it.
And as of today, we’re seeking a paid correspondent who can help us cover a new community, one people have been asking us to include for years.
It’s official: we’re coming to Mannum.
Email me if you’re interested in that role, or if your business is interested in supporting our efforts.
What’s next for Murray Bridge News?
So that’s it, then: we’ve achieved everything we could ever want?
Not on your life.
The biggest threat to Murray Bridge News is still the fact that I, its owner, could make way more money doing something else – this is one of the reasons we keep asking you to subscribe, or advertise with us.
But I genuinely think what we’re doing here is worth supporting.
We’re a certified social enterprise that exists to serve our community, not profit from it.
We share original stories you won’t find anywhere else – or you’ll hear them from us first, anyway.
We reach a much bigger audience than our competitors, and our advertising rates are more affordable.
And you’ll find less crazy s*** on here than your local Facebook group, that’s for sure – no offence intended, Scotty.
In an era when it’s harder than ever to find reliable information, when social media algorithms feed us rubbish and AI chat bots invent facts out of thin air, we’re proving that something as old-fashioned as a weekly email can help tie a community together.
Thanks for helping us learn that.
I’ll close with this.
I don’t know where my career will go over the next five years, or 10 or 15.
I don’t know if it makes sense for there to be two news publications in a community of this size.
But I know I’m grateful to you all for the journey we’ve been on since April 23, 2020.
And having a nine-year-old daughter who likes to write down people’s names when I’m out taking social photos, one who has conversations with me about the news stories she’s read on the screen in our office, gives me a whole lot of hope for the future.
Imagine an independent local news company being passed down through the generations.
Imagine how many thousands of local stories are waiting to be told.
I can.
I hope you’ll help us get there.
Peri Strathearn
Managing editor
