Hello everyone,
This week I bring you Simon Crerar, the founding editor of Buzzfeed Australia and now the co-founder of a local news startup called PS Media. To date Crerar and crew haven’t publicly disclosed details of how PS Media is going to work, so I relished the opportunity to get him talking.
I’ll leave you to listen to the podcast to find out more. My advice is to stick with it as the picture of this new concept in news publishing takes shape during the conversation.
What I will tell you here is that PS Media involves co-ownership by the community, is based on Local Government Areas (LGAs), and wants to be very different from traditional models where reporters and editors dictate the news agenda.
This startup is taking shape at a critical time for local media, with lockdowns hitting advertising revenues even harder than last year in many areas. For the record, the PS Media co-founders mentioned in the podcast are: Karen Mahlab, Rob Wise and Margaret Simons.
For those into news media
PS Media and The Walkley Foundation are running a virtual event, “Why philanthropy is backing local journalism” on September 15. It’s free and it’s got great speakers including Elizabeth Green (Chalkbeat), Daniel Bornstein (Solutions Journalism Network), Dan Stinton (Guardian Australia) and Lisa Watts (The Conversation). Register here
Next episode: Educating journos
I am going to discuss News Corp’s new News Academy and other matters with Executive Chairman Michael Miller. Can’t wait.
Have a great weekend,
Hal
The Crawford Media podcast music is”Ethernight Club” by Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com), licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 License http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
