Tough industry conditions claim another casualty

News MAP’s Journalism Assistance Fund has been quietly rolling out over recent weeks, granting news publishers between just under $43,000 and more than $4 million to be paid out gradually over the next three years.

But for Business News Australia, this came “too little, too late” to save the publisher from liquidation, spelling the end for a specialised independent news outlet which had spent years trying to make up for increasing lack of ad revenue – a struggle news publishers around the world are likely all too familiar with.

The multi-hundred-million-dollar deals being made by Australia’s major media conglomerates further highlight the deeply-entrenched disparities in the news industry, and the need to support a diverse news ecosystem.

With the second round of News MAP grants not expected to be launched for months, and the total sum of both rounds falling below what some say the industry needs, urgent action to imrove funding and sustainability must be taken to stem the flow of small, independent publishers bleeding out of Australia’s news landscape.

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Business News Australia the latest casualty in independent media’s fight for survival

While many spent the recent end-of-year holiday period relaxing and celebrating, Camilla Westerlund spent it coming to terms with the fact a 21-year chapter of her life was ending.

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ICYMI: Industry updates

Australia

• The $385 million merger between Seven West Media and Southern Cross Media Group was completed, creating one of Australia’s largest integrated media companies.Under the deal, Seven shareholders received 0.1552 Southern Cross Media shares for every Seven share held. The merger brings together a large collection of companies including a national free-to-air TV network, several radio stations, major print titles and digital audio platforms.
• Nine Entertainment sold its radio network to billionaire Arthur Laundy’s Laundy Family Office for $56 million.The sale included 2GB, 3AW, 4BC, 6PR, 2UE, Magic1278 and 4BH, and came as Nine acquired outdoor ad company QMS Media for $850 million. Despite the sale, Nine said it would continue to collaborate with the radio stations under the Laundy group’s ownership.
• Independent digital news platform Business News Australia went into liquidation, more than 20 years since founder Camilla Westerlund launched the first iteration of the title.Westerlund said shifts in the “economics of independent publishing” made the publisher’s model “unsustainable” despite efforts to adapt.
• Independent publishing house KK Press, which helped relaunch Cosmopolitan Australia in 2024, went into liquidation. The company also published T Australia: The New York Times Style Magazine.KK Press founder Katarina Kroslakova said although Cosmopolitan Australia “became the most widely read Women’s Lifestyle Magazine” and T Australia achieved 25 per cent year-on-year readership growth, “cash flow is brutal”.

Around the World

• Almost six decades since it was founded by US Congress, the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB), was officially dissolved after being stripped of US$1.1 billion in funding last year.The non-profit distributed about US$500 million annually to NPR, PBS and more than 1500 locally-owned radio and TV stations across the US. The Trump administration previously criticised NPR and PBS for spreading “radical, woke propaganda disguised as ‘news'”.CPB president and CEO Patricia Harrison said that the organisation’s board of directors voted “to protect the integrity of the public media system and the democratic values by dissolving, rather than allowing the organization to remain defunded and vulnerable to additional attack.”
• Former CNN host Don Lemon and independent journalist Georgia Fort were arrested after entering a Minnesota church and filming anti-ICE protesters as they disrupted a service.They were charged with conspiracy to deprive the church congregants of their rights and interference with religious freedom in a house of worship.
• Nigerian journalism platform WikkiTimes launched the Femi Falana Legal Defenders Fellowship, aimed strengthening legal protection for journalists and civic actors facing legal intimidation in the country. The fellowship will see 25 early-career Nigerian lawyers trained, mentored and placed in law firms, chambers and legal aid organisations, where they will support journalists and civic actors facing legal threats.Nigeria currently ranks 122 out 180 countries in Reporters Without Borders’ World Press Freedom Index. It is considered to be one of West Africa’s most dangerous countries for journalists, particularly during electoral periods.
• In Iran, at least five journalists – Mehdi Mahmoudian, Vida Rabbani, Hassan Abbasi, Artin Ghazanfari, and Hamed Araghi – were reportedly arrested as part of a government crackdown on protests that swept the country over the last month.The Committee to Protect Journalists was unable to confirm what charges the journalists face, and called for their immediate unconditional release.
• A new bill in the Maldives has been used to censor editorial content for the first time over claims a political cartoon illustration contravened the ‘basic tenets of Islam’.The Maldives Media and Broadcasting Commission ordered digital news outlet Adhadhu to immediately remove the cartoon, which reportedly satirised the prevalence of theft and bribery in the Maldives and bore a resemblance to Maldivian President Mohamed Muizzu. The outlet’s regular Siyaasee cartoon segment was also suspended indefinitely.The Maldives Journalists Association has since filed a request to annul the Media and Broadcasting Commission Act in the Maldives’ High Court, and applied for an interim order preventing the Commission from taking further action against media outlets while the case is ongoing.
• Older women tend to move from TV to audio roles at the BBC as they age while older men are portrayed as gaining “gravitas and wisdom associated with authority” , according to an independent review into representation at the broadcaster.At BBC News, there were nearly twice as many male presenters over 60 as females, with the investigation reporting a view that older women had to either try and keep looking younger or opt out altogether from being judged on their looks and “develop idiosyncratic personas”.

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