For the April 2024 Sampling Report, PIJI’s research team analysed public interest journalism in all 20 local government areas that make up Greater Adelaide.

The three local print outlets – The Bunyip, Fleurieu Sun and The Leader – focused on ‘Community’, followed by ‘Government’, ‘Public services’ and ‘Courts and crime’’.

‘Government’ was the largest focus of public interest journalism at the public broadcaster, the Messenger titles, and metro-scale newspaper, The Advertiser, followed by ‘Courts and crime’ coverage.

Compared to previous samples, it is unusual for court reporting and crime stories to receive this level of coverage relative to the other public interest journalism categories. ‘Community’ and ‘Public service ‘coverage followed.

Overall, the largest focus of public interest journalism coverage was ‘Community’, with samples showing stories in this category were found to be about local and community sport.

The ABC, Advertiser and InDaily were found to have little no local and community sport reporting.

‘Government’ was the next biggest focus overall. This coverage focussed mostly on state (106) and local governments (106), with some coverage of the federal government (49).

The three local newspapers and Messenger titles mostly covered local government, some state, and few federal government stories.

In terms of syndication, the team found “a mix of syndication results across different outlets, with moderate syndication at each of the titles within a larger network and none at the independent local newsrooms,” the report reads. “On the other hand, we found no syndication at The Bunyip, The Fleurieu Sun, and The Leader, with 100 per cent of output from these outlets being original content. ”

Since inception, the Australian News Data Project has logged 13 changes to the news landscape in Greater Adelaide.