By Richard King
Local public interest journalism is challenging the dominance of the big media players in Fremantle.
Fremantle’s residents are generally grateful for the westerly breeze that caresses the city and its suburbs in the late mornings and afternoons. On hot summer days especially, the ‘Fremantle Doctor’ proves a welcome relief from the gusty north-easterlies that come in from the desert and temperatures in the mid to high thirties. But on the rare occasions when a sheep ship is anchored in Fremantle Harbour at the mouth of the Swan River, the relationship becomes a little more strained. For days at a time, the city is suffused with an ovine excremental fug that lingers until the ship begins its long journey to the Middle East. It pongs, in short, and people don’t love it.
Among those who make a living from words, a belief that Western Australia in general, and Fremantle in particular, is poorly served by its media is palpable.
After a fortnight of meetings with reporters and writers on the subject of public-interest journalism in Fremantle, it occurs to me that the sheep-ship pong could serve as a metaphor for the distorting influence of money and power in mainstream media. Rich in history and civic pride, there is no shortage of passion and idealism in Fremantle. Among those who make a living from words, a belief that Western Australia in general, and Fremantle in particular, is poorly served by its media is palpable.
A report into media in Fremantle by the Public Interest Journalism Initiative in November 2022 found that the area is served by a mix of print and digital independent local titles, and PerthNow Fremantle, owned by the giant of WA’s media landscape, Seven West.
As the owner of The West Australian, WA’s only daily newspaper, Seven West has enormous power in the state, with penetration of over eighty percent. (It also owns The Sunday Times, the only other major newspaper in WA.) Such competition as Seven West has comes principally from WAtoday, Nine Entertainment’s online news presence, but the latter has nothing like the reach and influence of its tabloid rival.
For the editor of the Fremantle Herald, Steve Grant, there is no doubt that Seven West’s dominance is an issue. Over coffee in Chalkys Espresso Bar, which sits at the end of Fremantle’s high street, deep in the city’s historic West End, he articulates the frustration many journalists feel living in a one-newspaper state. ‘When these stories began to emerge about fracking in the eastern states, I thought, “why isn’t that being reported here?”’ For Grant, such lacunae make good local news sources more essential than ever before, and yet the challenges only seem to grow bigger. Shrinking revenues, digital disruption and COVID-19 have all taken their toll, as has the fact that Australian Community Media has recently downsized its operations, leaving ‘the Chook’ (as the Herald is known locally) to source its printing from Seven West. As Grant notes, with a smile, the increased costs attendant on this new arrangement – yet another extension of Seven West’s dominance – demand ‘creative solutions’.
Certainly Grant is thinking creatively about how to meet the challenges to public-interest journalism in a radically changed, and changing, environment. Joining us in Chalkys is Dr Mignon Shardlow, a senior lecturer in journalism at the University of Notre Dame, which owns many of the buildings in this part of town and enjoys a close working relationship with the Herald – one that is, Shardlow tells me, mutually beneficial for both institutions. One especially productive initiative allows for a two-day placement at the Herald for first-year journalism students.
As a former journalist herself, Shardlow knows how invaluable such practical experience is, while for Grant, who learnt his skills on the job, as a cadet on The Albany Advertiser, the regular flow of student labour is a way not only to keep costs down and free up time for more investigative projects but also to prepare the ground for the next generation of journalists.
More broadly, both Grant and Shardlow agree that what the sector needs is ‘innovation’. For Shardlow, such innovation might entail a role for the state in supporting local journalism and media diversity, though for Grant the solution is more likely to lie in the construction of new media platforms that can both act as a ‘harbour’ for local businesses and support public interest journalism.
More broadly, both Grant and Shardlow agree that what the sector needs is ‘innovation’.
Both approaches might have come together in the form of the Herald’s 2018 application to the Regional and Small Publishers Innovation Fund (secured by former Senator Nick Xenophon as the price of his support for the Coalition government’s 2017 Broadcasting Reform Bill); but this, Grant tells me, was summarily rejected in favour of what, in his opinion, are far less innovative and sustainable models. And while he is enormously grateful for the goodwill of local politicians Josh Wilson and Simone McGurk, whose increased advertising spend helped sustain the Herald through the COVID period, his frustration at the political class in general is only too apparent.
Former Fremantle mayor Brad Pettitt would sympathise with Grant’s frustration on this score. In a brief but friendly and unguarded chat at his office around the corner from Chalkys, Pettitt places his head in his hands when I ask him how well served (or not) the state is by its mainstream media. ‘You know, it reminds me of my time in Cambodia’, he says of the noisy praise being heaped on the outgoing State Premier Mark McGowan; ‘it’s like the media is just there to praise the leader.’
Now an Upper House member for the WA Greens in the Parliament of Western Australia, Pettitt is acutely aware of how important public-interest journalism is to the framing of good policy, even at the local level. Recalling his occasional run-ins with the Herald over the issue of developing the city centre (and noting en route the irony that greater density would likely translate into more advertising revenue for the Chook), he is grateful for the ‘robust conversation’ to which the Herald’s reporting and commentary gave rise, and worried by the drop-off (as he sees it) in such constructive public debate. It is not unusual to hear politicians paying lip service to the Fourth Estate; nor, for the most part, is it particularly impressive. But Pettitt’s ‘sadness’ at the lack of opportunities for public-interest journalism comes across as sincere.
For Pettitt, the ‘sweet point’ for the public sphere saw the mainstream media both augmented and challenged by the rise of social digital tools. And while many of the people I talk to are alarmed at the corrosive effect of social media on public debate and the culture more generally, it’s clear that something of that spirit survives in the Fremantle media ecology. For the founder and editor of the online magazine Fremantle Shipping News, Michael Barker, for example, digital media offers enormous freedom and elasticity to the local journalist (though not, of course, much revenue, which for FSN tends to come from readers’ donations.).
Over coffee near his home in South Fremantle, the former judge tells me that he has even been experimenting with the ‘large language model’ ChatGPT, prompting it to write two articles on the Indigenous Voice to Parliament – one in favour and one against. (Both of these have been published on the site, and both, suggests Barker, are serviceable.) Joking that his proudest moment in journalism was Facebook’s 2021 ban on Australian news content (‘because it put me on the same level as the big boys’), Barker is nonetheless serious about keeping his readers honestly informed, in articles that both celebrate Fremantle and set out local events and controversies.
As with many local news sources, it is the stories bearing on density and development that account for much of the latter content, these issues being the ones through which broad social and economic trends are felt at the community level. Indeed, this sense of local issues being part of a broader discussion is one that clearly animates Barker, who describes himself as a product of the 1950s, when respect for ‘individual initiative’ was set within a wider context of social-democratic governance. His passion for the Harbour, which many locals share (sheep-ship odours notwithstanding), is a reflection of this broader focus: that Freo remains a working port gives Barker a deep sense of ‘connection’.
While Barker doesn’t especially warm to my suggestion that there is something of the ‘blogger ethos’ in the approach of the Fremantle Shipping News (it is, he insists, a magazine, not a blog), Roel Loopers is adamant that he is ‘only a blogger’. Nevertheless, the Dutch-born septuagenarian is a greatly respected presence in Fremantle, and as representative of the spirit of enquiry and honest reporting as anyone I talk to. As founder and sole keeper of the website Freo’s View, Loopers keeps a meticulous record of the day-to-day happenings in his adoptive city, pounding the streets with his camera and notebook, on the lookout for an interesting story. Raised in The Hague in modest circumstances, he worked as a photojournalist for the Deutsche Presse-Agentur (German Press Agency), before emigrating to Australia in 1982.
Despite his diffidence, he is impressively scrupulous in his refusal of any gifts or freebees and does not accept advertising on his site. Moreover, he is clearly motivated by a powerful sense of social justice. In our conversation, which takes place over the phone on account of a visit from a certain virus, Loopers takes aim at the racist ‘rednecks’ that pop up whenever Indigenous issues bubble-up into public consciousness. A strong supporter of the Indigenous Voice, and of local initiatives towards Reconciliation, Loopers has ‘no tolerance for intolerance’.
Such passions are much in evidence in Fremantle – a progressive and diverse city, rednecks notwithstanding. Indeed, it often feels to me like a peculiarly opinionated place, a point I put to the Herald’s editor, and to its founder and owner Andrew Smith, in a follow-up meeting at their West End office. Both men agree, and stories are swapped about how and why we came to the city and what in particular appeals to us about it. And yet Grant also senses a shift in mood, perhaps not unrelated to the challenges faced by publications such as his.
A recent demonstration against the AUKUS deal, which means that the neighbouring city of Cockburn will harbour nuclear-powered subs, attracted only twenty-five people – this in a city with a long and proud history of anti-nuclear activism. It’s a depressing situation, but this is what happens when the media ecology is so unevenly stacked: sooner or later you are faced with the prospect of something infinitely more toxic than sheep shit drifting in with the afternoon breeze.
Richard King is an author and critic based in Fremantle. His most recent book is Here Be Monsters: Is Technology Reducing Our Humanity? (Monash University Publishing). All images courtesy of Roel Loopers.
This project is supported by the Copyright Agency’s Cultural Fund.
