Who's in the news?: sourcing priorities in regional newspapers

Abstract

Australia’s regional newspapers are overwhelmingly local in their news focus, concentrating primarily or entirely on events, issues and people within the geographical borders of their print circulation area. In so doing, they position themselves as central to local communication networks, and as providers of a “voice” for their communities, both geographical and interest-based. For such publications, geographical location is a key definer of news, even though most also have a growing online and social media presence. This concentration on local content is one of the factors that suggests a closer link between newspapers and communities in regional areas than is typically the case in larger population centres. It also suggests a preference for local sources of news – and in particular local people as providers of information and opinion. This in turn raises questions about the extent to which regional newspapers follow Western journalism conventions that foreground the use of authoritative, or “official”, sources. This paper reports on the findings of a study that examined sourcing, and particularly prioritisation of sources, at regional newspapers in four states of Australia over time. It found that, although the majority of the sources quoted on the front pages of these newspapers were local, the publications demonstrated a strong preference for authoritative sources.