Coronavirus News vow: we won’t miss an edition

News Corp head Michael Miller’s pledge company will continue to deliver vital, credible news amid coronavirus crisis.

News Corp boss Michael Miller. News Corp, publisher of The Australian, is launching community messages in its mastheads to allow community organisations to communicate in newspapers and digitally free of charge.

News Corp Australia boss ­Michael Miller has vowed that the media company’s newspaper mastheads “will not miss an ­edition” as the nation looks for ­reliable and credible news amid the global COVID-19 outbreak.

Mr Miller, News Corp’s executive chairman Australasia, has spoken to over 60 business leaders and advertisers in Australia over the past week, assuring them of the publisher’s support through the largest public health crisis in a century as business scrambles to save jobs.

“We are embedded in Australia. We’re part of Australia. And so involvement is far more than just the news brand. It’s a community brand as well,” he said.

“We’re worried particularly for small to medium businesses who rely on foot traffic. They don’t have digital delivery yet. Some large companies have had the privilege of benefiting.

“We’re working now with 50 leading Australian businesses to ensure their community ­messages, the customer messages, ­­­­their staff messages (get out).”

News Corp, publisher of The Australian, is launching community messages in its mastheads to allow community organisations to communicate in newspapers and digitally free of charge.

“So you’re going to start seeing a lot more ads in our papers from this week, whereby we are ensuring that their community messages are being impacted in the trusted environment of our news media brands.

“I’ve spoken to well over 60 business leaders from leading companies over the past two days, as they all try to make sense of what the opportunities are,” Mr Miller told The Australian.

Newspapers and online mastheads are experiencing a spike in sales and subscriptions as readers seek out trusted sources.

“I keep urging people to not make rushed decisions, either for the positive or the negative, on a few days, but what we’re definitely seeing is that people are turning to trusted media brands,” he said.

Sales of newspapers have been strong in supermarkets with audiences up 48 per cent last week. Digital subscriptions across the mastheads were up 21 per cent, with particularly strong sales of The Australian. “I have to call out the Oz in particular for being in high demand at supermarkets, which might not be what you’d expect, but it particularly has had a huge spike in interest,” he said. The daily audience of News.com.au has grown to two million a day, with the website’s coronavirus coverage page views already exceeding that of its bushfire coverage over summer.

In the past week, The Daily Telegraph has also seen its biggest increase in online subscriptions.

Mr Miller said the newspapers and major websites were “very successfully” publishing remotely and he vowed that the major mastheads would not miss an edition.

“We never have missed an edition, and we’re not going to now either,” he said.

The crisis has highlighted the need for verified news as fake news and rumours do the rounds of social media websites like Twitter and Facebook.

“I think that more and more people are recognising what a trusted news brand is,” Mr Miller said. “It’s produced by journalists who put their name on it, their credibility out there every day.

“It’s edited. It’s checked. We sign up to codes of conduct. And we’re held accountable.”

Asked about the possibility of job losses as a result of the virus, Mr Miller said: “Like any company, we will be looking at how we best resource in this period.”