PIJI has released a new report detailing high level findings from the Australian News Sampling Project across 2023.
The report includes a comparative sample in the Eyre Peninsula, conducted in February and November 2023, and a study of court reporting across regional New South Wales.
The report found 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 print outlets 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.
Read the full Australian News Sampling Project: 2023 Report online.
About the Australian News Sampling Project
The Australian News Sampling Project launched in 2022 and is PIJI’s ongoing effort to monitor the production output of local news. Using a content analysis framework, this research assesses the level of public interest journalism produced by local print and digital news in sample communities around Australia.