Media. [essay]

Abstract

Newspapers love anniversaries. Anniversaries of disasters, political milestones and sporting triumphs make good copy. Newspaper anniversaries are even better, providing publishing companies with opportunities to celebrate - and remind loyal readers of - their historical significance and their 'scoops'. The New South Wales press historian R.B. Walker included an entry in his index for 'firsts': the first newspaper at Maitland, the first penny daily, the first tabloid and so on. Doubtless the publications themselves crowed about such milestones at the time. The issues and problems now confronting traditional hard-copy newspapers are not so different from those that faced their twentieth- and even nineteenth-century counterparts: cost of newsprint, reliance on advertising support, influence of new media technologies, attempts of governments to control the flow of information, and repressive libel laws. Meanwhile, the Australian people live in a society with perhaps the most concentrated print media ownership in the Western world.