Printed Centralian Advocate soon to fold

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By ERWIN CHLANDA

 

The Centralian Advocate have not confirmed nor denied it, but The Guardian, quoting News Corp executive chairman Michael Miller, is reporting that the masthead’s printed paper will soon will be no more.

 

It is among more than 100 Murdoch titles affected, with major job losses in regional and community coverage.

 

Mr Miller is quoted in the Nine newspapers this morning as saying, in a leaked letter to his staff: “Over recent months we have undertaken a comprehensive review of our regional and community newspapers.

 

“This review considered the ongoing consumer shift to reading and subscribing news online, and the acceleration of businesses using digital advertising.”

 

This is a shift the Alice Springs News anticipated in 1997 when we became one of the country’s first online newspapers, initially in tandem with printed editions before going exclusively online in 2011.

 

In recent weeks the Advocate’s digital presence, as an adjunct to the Darwin-based NT News, has been expanded.

 

The development announced today makes the Alice Springs News the only locally owned and produced newspaper in this town.

 

We look forward to serving it, as we have done for the past 26 years.

 
 
UPDATE MAY 29 @ 11am
 
Centralian Advocate editor Anthony Geppa, in response to a request for comment yesterday, confirmed by telephone a short while ago that the printed edition of the Centralian Advocate will cease to exist but declined to discuss the matter any further.
 
 
 

6 COMMENTS

  1. As an ex-pat of Alice Springs, the closure of “Murdoch newspapers” disadvantages many people especially in rural areas. Despite what is said many are not bound to computers nor are they addicted to the latest apps because of their age or not being able to access new knowledge.
    The assumption that everybody will be able to read on line is a joke. Many in rural areas enjoy sitting and reading about hatch match and despatch in their area and stories that relate. Too many assume! Who will talk to the outback if not the printed news?

  2. Well great news from my perspective. Everyone jumping on the support local, but the Murdoch group is hardly Local. I don’t recall ever seeing an ad from the NT Goverment in the Alice Springs News, which I think is very hypocritical considering they are one of the buy local advocates.
    It just clicked, perhaps when they were told they should be advocates, the minions mistakenly thought the bosses meant to place the ads in the Advocate, instead of the local paper, the Alice Springs News!
    So let’s not pretend anymore and start supporting local and now that the Advocate is gone, I guess there will be at least some ads placed by the government we own and the Town Council we also own.

  3. @ Dr George Toepfer: The opposite is true. Our online newspaper is putting people in the outback on par with the rest of the world.
    Most remote communities now have mobile phone and online service and as such they have access to the Alice Springs News at a level that could never be imagined with printed papers.
    I am speaking with first-hand experience: For the first 15 of our 26 years in publication the best we could do was to send bundles of papers to the bush stores, with significant delays and little certainty that they would be displayed and picked up by shoppers. (In town we provided home delivery.)
    Now these outback phone and computer users have exactly the same access to the News as do people in Alice Springs, Frankfurt and Cape Town and New York. And many are quite advanced in years.
    Erwin Chlanda, Editor

  4. Hi Erwin: Very sad to hear of the Centralian Advocate no longer in print – it is the end of an historic and at times colourful era.
    Cheers, Mike Mercer (ex Advocate printer from the “hot metal” days).

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