News Corp aims for a June wire launch

News Corp Australia’s newswire service is aiming to be ready to launch by the end of June.

News Corp editorial director Mel Mansell

News Corp Australia’s newswire service is aiming to be ready to launch by the end of June and is casting the net for staff in most major capitals as well as an editor-in-chief to head up the ambitious enterprise following the company’s decision to pull out as a shareholder of AAP.

With the likely impending closure of Australian Associate Press’ newswire service after 85 years, News Corp Australia (publisher of The Australian) has further detailed its plans for a newswire service to provide content to its own mastheads as well as other potential media partners.

Mel Mansell, who is heading up the project going by the working title of NCA NewsWire, said the wire service would be a “back-to-basics” operation focusing on the fundamentals of reporting.

“It’s breaking news, business and sport. It’s delivered quickly and accurately. It’s going to be a very dynamic organisation. It’s probably safe to say that in many ways it’s going back to journalism 101. You know who, what, when, why. We’re getting them all in the first three pars.”

Mr Mansell, a former editor of The Adelaide Advertiser, told The Australian the service would provide content to other News Corp mastheads but would be independent of them. It will also aim to sell content to other media organisations in much the same manner that AAP currently does.

“We are establishing this as an independent unit from the company. So the mastheads will be clients, and the initial design has been to provide content for our mastheads, and that includes The Australian and News.com.au,” Mr Mansell said.

“It is also going to be content that we will make available as required to clients outside our business.

“We will be pretty open to engagement with potential customers about what sort of content they need going down the track.”

AAP chairman and News Corp executive Campbell Reid has said NewsWire will hire a mix of internal and external staff, with an aim to hire former AAP staff.

Mr Mansell said he will not be the editor of the newswire service although there was a shortlist of candidates for the top job.

While AAP is still considering possible purchase of its business from two parties, current shareholders Nine and News have said they won’t continue as shareholders or clients of a new AAP.

NewsWire is looking for staff to be based in Sydney, Melbourne, Canberra, Brisbane and Adelaide and will likely have a Perth office. As with AAP, there will be a strong focus on courts and crime reporting, but there will also be specialised business coverage.

“It’ll be a fairly substantial court service because it’s a requirement of all our customers, whether they would be internal or external,” Mr Mansell said.

Canberra press gallery reporting will also be a key focus, seeking to emulate the high standard set by AAP reporters.

“The strength of our mastheads is the expertise they bring in terms of the strength of the analysis and the commentary and the understanding of what’s happened,” Mr Mansell said.

With the onset of the COVID-19 crisis, Mr Mansell is of a view that policy announcements out of Canberra are going to be more important to people’s lives than ever, with a particular focus on providing stories to regional publications as well.

“Canberra, to me, is reaching a stage where the politics don’t matter; it’s going to be policies,” Mr Mansell said.

“We’re in a period where there’s going to be a lot of policies that are going to impact people so in our coverage, in terms of breaking news … in the future, that’s going to be pretty important.”