FCJ chairperson warns of Big Tech threat to community newspapers
Outgoing chairperson Ben Burger highlighted the vital role of local reporters at the annual AVBOB FCJ Excellence Awards while warning of growing industry pressures.
Community newspapers need readers, advertisers, funders, technology partners and policymakers to understand what is lost when a local publication disappears.
The outgoing chairperson of the Forum of Community Journalists, Ben Burger, said Finley Peter Dunne, an American journalist and writer, captured the purpose of the job in Observations by Mr Dooley (1902): “The job of the newspaper is to comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable.”
“These awards are the Oscars of the community news industry”
He was one of the speakers at the AVBOB FCJ Annual Excellence Awards on August 21 and said, “That is still our job. It is why this work matters, and why supporting it matters. It is wonderful to see so many familiar faces – and so many of the people whose names and bylines have kept our communities informed, challenged and connected over the past year. Let me say this plainly and with pride: these awards are the Oscars of the community news industry. And tonight is, as always, the highlight of the year for the FCJ.
“This evening is about the finalists and the winners, but it is also about the work that brought them here. Excellence in community journalism lives in the reporter who keeps phoning until a municipality answers; in the photographer who finds the one frame that says more than a thousand words; in the sub-editor who catches the detail everyone else missed; and in the publisher who keeps showing up for a community, even when the business model makes showing up increasingly difficult. These awards recognise the best in our craft, and the craft is alive in this room.”
Big Tech absorbs local ad revenue
According to Burger, a storm is gathering around community newspapers.
“We are facing an unprecedented onslaught on the advertising front. Big Tech is absorbing advertising revenue that used to help sustain community newspapers. This is not an abstract concern or a line in a strategy document. It is affecting our members directly, through shrinking newsrooms and even newspaper closures. Every time advertising moves away from the publications that know a community best, there is less money for reporting, less capacity to hold local power to account and fewer opportunities for young journalists to enter the profession.”
