This week, PIJI has released a major new piece of research: a comparative report of the 2023 key findings from the Australian News Sampling Project and providing insights into our research methodology.
Called the Australian News Sampling Project: 2023 Report, the new research includes the results of a comparative sample in the Eyre Peninsula, conducted in February and November 2023, and a new study of court reporting in regional New South Wales conducted in October 2023.
Key findings from the new research include that:
- Moderate to high levels of public interest journalism is published in most sampled areas.
- Community coverage is frequently the largest category of public interest reporting while courts and crime coverage is almost always the least reported category.
- Regional titles publish a higher proportion of local stories, while publications based in capital cities cover fewer local stories compared to state and national stories.
- In the Eyre Peninsula there has been moderate change since the region’s two newspapers were acquired and brought into the same editorial structure. Government reporting declined as community reporting increased.
- Geographies of coverage in this very remote region of South Australia remained remarkably consistent after the merger, however, with reporting occurring in every local government area sampled.
- Most court reporting in regional New South Wales locations sampled is conducted by major news media. There was little to no evidence of court reporting at the majority of independent media outlets.
- Court stories mostly covered plea hearings in Local Court. Most outlets primarily covered violent crime.
- In one region, Broken Hill, there were no court reports published across the entire sampled month.
The Australian News Sampling Project was launched in August 2022. It is part of PIJI’s ongoing assessment of the state of public interest journalism. The project comprises a content analysis of news production in different local government areas each month, measuring public interest journalism output and media diversity. The selected LGAs may be new areas of investigation and/or resampled areas to gain more insights into how local conditions have changed for public interest journalism.
Read the Australian News Sampling Project: 2023 Report here.