The Australian News Data Report
The Australian News Data Report (ANDR) assesses media diversity and plurality. It also identify communities lacking fair and equal access to public interest journalism, local news, and news infrastructure to keep them safe during emergencies.
Project data is publicly available for the community, industry and government to engage with and to form an evidence base for media policy and reform.
Maps and data
The Tracking Changes in News Map shows the production and availability of news in Australia as it changes over time.
It tracks the opening and closing of news outlets and newsrooms; changes to service levels, mergers, and the digitisation of print publications. This project has collected data since 1 January 2019 and is a particularly useful resource for observing changes to the media landscape due to COVID-19.
Released April 2020
The Local News Producers Maps show print, digital and broadcast (radio and television) news producers.
Despite their importance, local news producers are also arguably the least visible and most vulnerable sector of the news market in Australia. This project helps to identify local news producers around the country and contribute to policy design to support the sector.
Released December 2021
ANDR Data Captures
These maps contain a static analysis of local news by state or territory captured in April 2022.
The Australian News Index (ANI) is a searchable database of state/territory, national and non-geographic news producers. The ANI supplies the data for the ANMP visualisations and will also incorporate the Australian News Sampling Project data in due course.
In April 2022, the Regional Newspapers Inquiry pointed to the need for core, longitudinal industry data in its recommendations to government; PIJI’s Australian News Index fulfills those needs by assisting communities, researchers and policymakers to better understand the health of Australia’s news-media landscape.
Released May 2022
The Australian News Sampling Project (ANSP) assesses news output by specific geographic location/s to understand the local character and quantity of public interest journalism production and produces each as a case study. It has been designed to examine and contrast the volume and frequency of locally relevant news content at an individual community level.
As this body of work grows, comparative analysis will be available by similar geographies, demographics, economies, natural disasters and other emergency events.
Content analyses
City of Fremantle, Western Australia, December 2022
City of Burnie, Tasmania, December 2022
Bourke Shire Council, New South Wales, December 2022
Shire of Bourke, New South Wales – November 2022
City of Burnie, Tasmania – November 2022
City of Fremantle, Western Australia – November 2022
Rural City of Murray Bridge, South Australia – October 2022
Shire of Esperance, Western Australia – October 2022
Bathurst Regional Council, New South Wales – October 2022
About the Australian News Sampling Project
Released October 2022
This project analyses samples of news coverage in a given month against two benchmarks: the amount of public interest journalism produced, and the relative localism of the stories to the audience.
The project’s pilot phase will be used to rigour test the research framework and methodology before its broader application from 2023 onward.
For the purpose of this project, public interest journalism is defined as:
Original content that records, reports or investigates issues of public significance for Australians; issues relevant to engaging Australians in public debate and in informing democratic decision making, or content which relates to community and local events.
In practice, this means news relating to the functioning of government at all levels, including their agencies, foreign policy, the economy and significant public expenditure; crime and the courts; social services such as health and education; emergency services including police and fire; and community individuals and events, including local sport.
The localism of a story is both whether the story is local in nature – that is, affects a small and identifiable geographic community, such as a single town or local government area – and whether it is local specifically to the local government area being sampled, to a nearby LGA, or to a distant LGA. An article about a community event in Brisbane that is published in a newspaper in Adelaide might be a local story in its content, but it is not local to a South Australian audience.
The target sample size for each outlet is the less of 100 news articles or the entire month of content.
With this work, we seek to expand the amount of information about local news around Australia. This project fills a data gap in the existing Newsroom Mapping work through its focus on the content output, testing the underlying assumption that newspapers and websites are providing public interest journalism for their local communities.
This project is under active development and the scope of sampling, analysing, and reporting will change over time. Beginning in October, this survey will examine whether a story appears to be originally produced for its outlet, or appears to be externally or internally syndicated content.
Radio and television are not surveyed in this process. We can remotely audit print and digital news content, but it is much more difficult for us to reliably access radio or television news programming from outside of their broadcast areas. In almost all cases that we have found, there are no public digital archives of this broadcast news content available, meaning that assessments must also be done on live streams. This is a significant barrier to independent scrutiny, and not one that PIJI is resourced to overcome.
This project is supported by the Copyright Agency’s Cultural Fund
Each month PIJI releases a narrative report detailing changes made in the database, as well as a data sheet as it stood at the end of the month. The narrative report discusses the evidence for changes that were made and how the project design influences them. This is supported by a quarterly analysis of broader trends observed across the landscape. These reports are included in the March, June, September and December reports.
Latest Report
Report by:
Gary Dickson, Head of Research, Public Interest Journalism Initiative.
Report and Data Archive
Month
January
February
March
April
May
June
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September
October
November
December
PIJI’s Australian News Data Report (ANDR) is a body of work designed to assess media diversity and plurality.
Some ANDR projects are static snapshots and others are cumulative by design. PIJI is constantly adding new data to enrich our understanding of the health of Australia’s public interest journalism. Key ongoing data and analysis produced by PIJI include the Australian Newsroom Mapping Project, Australian News Index and Australian News Sampling Project. Results from each of these projects are combined and published in the Australian News Data Report on a monthly basis.
The Australian News Data Report (ANDR) helps to:
- identify key issues and trends, particularly around any declines in the diversity and plurality of public interest journalism
- identify communities in need, such as those in regional and remote areas which have been disproportionately affected by news reductions
- check there is sufficient news infrastructure to keep communities safe during emergencies such as bushfires, floods, and pandemics
- provide communities with a voice to demonstrate and shape their local news’ needs
- help market entrants and new business models to identify and fill market gaps
- determine policy design and effectiveness in delivering public returns
- provide transparency and accountability surrounding government intervention – direct or indirect – through reporting public benefit and,
- assist broader discussions around acceptable minimum levels of news coverage.
ANDR data is made publicly available on a Creative Commons license to ensure that it can inform research and policy to support the news media. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License which places only a few restrictions:
- You must credit Gary Dickson, PIJI and the Australian News Data Report wherever you use the data.
- You cannot use the data for commercial purposes.
- Whatever you create using this data you should share on a similar license. Note that this condition may not apply where the findings of the data are being cited in a research or policy context.
CITATION: Dickson G. 2020. Australian News Data Report: Public Interest Journalism Initiative. <https://anmp.piji.com.au>
VISUALISATION: Harley Alexander developed the visualisation. All rights reserved.
This report outlines PIJI’s criteria for inclusion in the Australian News Data Report.
Without an industry standard definition of ‘news’, PIJI has developed our independent guidelines to best align our research findings to journalism that contributes to the public good.
The Australian News Data Report maps and databases are actively maintained.
To add or correct information, please fill out this form.
Please be sure to give as much detail as you can so that we can follow up – only verified changes will appear on the map.
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The onset of COVID-19 and other upheavals in the Australian news media landscape have unveiled the rapidly diminishing production of public interest journalism in Australia, particularly in coverage of our councils, parliaments, and courts. PIJI’s research show’s regional and rural communities have been most adversely affected, with emerging local news gaps in print and online at the forefront of concern.
PIJI’s comprehensive research has become a leading point of reference for examining the state of public interest journalism production and availability in Australia. This means we now have a unique opportunity for systemic industry reform, using our Australia-first data to guide short and long-term policy ideas into action.
Public interest journalism in Australia plays a critical role in our democracy. PIJI’s research is uncovering indicators of a lack of media plurality and diversity across Australia. This research has the power to help communities and decision makers create effective media policies and interventions that improve the quality and provision of public interest journalism in Australia.