The Alice Springs News was founded in 1994 as the largest independent newspaper in the Northern Territory of Australia.
It appeared each Thursday in Alice Springs, with a circulation of 11,500, and covering an area of one million square kilometers of Central Australia.
Alice Springs News Online was founded in 1997 and was one of the world's first newspapers on the web. Our online edition steadily grew in popularity, partly because of its five million word archive which became a sought-after resource about the region for tourists, business and researchers.
This year we judged that the online readership is surpassing the print edition readership, in a clear trend of the news reading public inexorably drifting to the web: We mothballed the paper edition in March this year.
We like the results of having gone exclusively online:
We're in the vanguard:
One of the best analyses of the drift away from print media is Life in the Clickstream by the Australian Media Alliance, of which Alice Springs News managing editor Erwin Chlanda is a member. It's well worth a complete read but here are three poignant facts:-
1 Online advertising is growing relentlessly at the expense of print media.
The advertising market by sector, 2000–2009. Source: CEASA.
2 Advertising in print media is in decline.
Advertising expenditure in print media 2000-2009. Source: CEASA.
3 Not many younger people read newspapers.
Greatest: born before 1929. Hard times: 1929-1945. Boomers: 1956-1964. Post-boomers: after 1964. Newspaper readership by generation, USA, 1972-2002. Source: The Vanishing Newspaper, Philip Meyer.
The publisher of this online edition is Erwin Chlanda Pty Ltd, Alice Springs, Australia.
THE ALICE SPRINGS NEWS IS ALICE SPRINGS OWNED AND OPERATED.
Tel 0418 890040. alicenews@ozemail.com.au