MP Dugald Saunders backs regional journalism

This week, the Daily Liberal joined with newspaper across NSW to put two crucial questions on the front page, addressed to Premier Dominic Perrottet and Labor leader Chris Minns.

The questions were pretty straightforward. To help protect the future of local news across NSW, will you:

The Daily Liberal put the same questions to Mr Saunders, who is hoping to retain his position as the MP for the Dubbo electorate when voters go to the polls on March 25.

"The media landscape has changed dramatically over the past few years - there is no escaping that - with declining advertising revenue across all mediums and our hard-working journalists being asked to do more with less," he said.

"They deserve our support."

Mr Saunders said the government recognises the importance of all regional media - radio, print, TV and digital, in ensuring regional communities have access to trusted news sources covering the issues that matter to them.

NSW Government agencies are required to spend at least 26 per cent of their campaign media expenditure on media platforms targeting regional audiences for advertising campaigns to regional and remote communities.

"This ensures important government messages for regional NSW are targeted to the communities they are speaking to," Mr Saunders said.

Mr Saunders said the 2020 changes after COVID and the closure of certain newspapers, give councils greater flexibility in the way they publish certain notices.

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"It's recognising changes to the media landscape and allowing individual councils, rather than government, to make the decisions on how to communicate most effectively with their communities," he said.

Mr Saunders reiterated Deputy Premier Paul Toole's sentiments about wanting a "strong media".

"We recently announced a new $3 million Regional Media Fund," he said.

"This fund will assist regional media outlets to drive innovation, tell stories in new ways and ensure that our communities have access to the news and information they need about the issues affecting them."

The Regional Media Fund is for specific projects and there is a long list of things money cannot be used for, including staff wages and other employee costs, and equipment or software purchases outside the designated project.

Higher prices for newsprint, rising costs of production and distribution and cut-throat competition for ad revenue from foreign-owned digital giants have pushed many long-standing papers to breaking point.

The NSW newspapers of the ACM network - Australia's largest publisher of regional news and the owner of this newspaper - are not asking for grants or handouts.

Instead, they are asking the next NSW government to show it cares about the future of regional newspapers and the communities they serve by committing to measures that get state government and local councils supporting trusted local news sources through advertising.

This is being done in Victoria, with weekly Victorian government advertisements running in newspapers since Premier Dan Andrew's re-election.

Those ads are, in turn, helping to pay the wages of the local journalists, photographers and editors asking questions on behalf of the voters, ratepayers and taxpayers of their town and region.