New era for the Mercury

FROM this week, the Mercury will introduce a new subscription system for online. Editor Matt Deighton explains why.

THE Mercury is a local company, which employs local people and has deep roots, spanning generations, throughout every corner of this magnificent island.

We employ more than 150 local staff, who have been with us for anywhere between a few months to more than 40 years and, with our wider network, rank among the state’s biggest employers.

Tasmania’s newsagency industry alone employs more than 750 people across more than 200 outlets. Our newspapers play a fundamental role in their day to day survival.

Beyond this, there are more than 450 outlets, which are subagents and sell our products.

There’s a further 50 people involved in our primary distribution network, including businesses such as Streefland’s Transport, ATBT and Robson’s Transport in the North-West.

These are businesses that operate throughout the state and reach every town every day.

Mercury Editor Matt Deighton.

Our state of the art $30 million print centre at Technopark – which also prints The Herald Sun and The Australian – is run entirely by Tasmanians.

Yes we are a proud member of a global media organisation – a network which has allowed the likes of ex-Mercury sports reporter Mike Sheehan to become the leading AFL writer in the land or, more recently, ex-Mercury reporter Ellen Whinnett to be appointed News Corp’s European correspondent – but our heart is and always will be in Tasmania.

Two years ago we celebrated our 160th anniversary.

And for 162 years The Mercury has been at the heart of Tasmania, capturing

the highs and lows through our local prism, from wars, floods, bushfires, disasters, atrocities and depressions to the glory days of sporting achievements, booming tourism and agriculture and manufacturing. And our amazing rise to become a must-visit cultural powerhouse for creative arts, food, wine … and Mona.

We have been a proud champion of this state and fight hard every day for a better outcome for our readers and the wider community.

The changes we are about to implement are to ensure we celebrate another successful 162 years.

We believe our people have value. We believe the content they produce every day has value. We believe it contributes to the fabric of this state.

Today our operation is a far cry from the Hobarton Mercury, which started on July 5, 1854, by George Auber Jones and John Davies.

The Mercury is a multimedia publisher, producing our daily newspaper but also content across a range of established and new and emerging platforms, from our websites, to Facebook and Instagram.

As the times have rapidly changed, so have we.

But some things won’t.

Our mission is to remain a strong local voice for our community, a vigorous watchdog on all levels of government and to keep being a major employer of Tasmanians, young and old, for generations to come.

We believe our people have value. We believe the content they produce every day has value. We believe it contributes to the fabric of this state.

So from Tuesday we, for the first time, introduce subscription packages for all our content across all our platforms. We will explain these in detail in Tuesday’s Mercury.

With this comes a commitment to our readers to produce journalism that makes a difference. Every single day.

Today we produce more grassroots, local journalism than ever before.

As the media world has become more homogenised and more celebrity driven, our focus has turned sharply local, lifting the bonnet on what is happening in our suburbs and among our slew of local councils.

This has resulted in significant and award winning investigative journalism which helped overhaul decades of archaic and secretive operations among some of our key councils and exposed widespread problems with everything from exorbitant expense keeping to basic accounting.

It sparked major reform at both local and State Government level and secured a better outcome for ratepayers. This work continues every day.

We have embarked on landmark news campaigns which have demanded and won strong outcomes for our communities.

This has included ambitious set pieces such as family violence, which sparked a major funding commitment by the State Government, to significant work on education and mental health.

A campaign on freedom of speech reversed a decision that would have allowed companies to sue mum and dad opponents for defamation.

We demanded a “fair go” for our regions in the lead-up to the Federal election.

In recent months, we opposed an ill-informed decision to shut year-round research facilities on Macquarie Island at a time when we should be developing our Antarctic brand, capturing a community backlash which sparked an almost immediate reversal in federal government policy.

And in recent years, we have made the conscious decision to invest much more strongly in in-depth reporting.

Our Saturday news magazine, TasWeekend, led by editor Amanda Ducker, and experienced Sunday Tasmanian reporting team under the guidance of editor Brad Petersen have produced some of the best long-form journalism in the state, all told from a quintessentially Tasmanian perspective.

The TasWeekend coverage of Port Arthur, done hand-in-hand with the local community, is something which could only have been done by a local news outlet and local reporters embedded in their regions.

And the Mercury is no echo chamber.

We will never be without our critics, but our pages each day are full of viewpoints and opinions from every part of the state and all sides of the political spectrum.

I would personally challenge anyone to find a more diverse collection of ideas than those which appear in our Talking Point pages day in, day out.

This is not a fluke, but a conscious decision to hold a daily community discussion.

We believe a strong newspaper is merely a community having a conversation with itself.

Sometimes a very passionate and charged conversation, but a conversation nonetheless.

And we are unapologetically optimistic. We believe in the future of this state, its people and our potential.

As the media landscape changes, our strategy is simple. We aim to provide you with news that is local – news you cannot find anywhere else – from a source you can trust.

Today we open a new chapter in the story of the Mercury.

We hope you will join us on the journey.

Originally published as New era for the Mercury