News Corp to launch 50 digital-only local titles over three years

News Corp Australia is planning to launch more than 50 digital-only mastheads, with the first 15 to be up and running by the end of September.

News Corp’s national community masthead network editor John McGourty. Picture: AAP

News Corp Australia is planning to launch more than 50 digital-only mastheads, with the first 15 to be up and running by the end of September, led by “grassroots journalism”.

The new titles will cover highly sought-after local crime and court stories, plus planning and development in the area, schools, health and lifestyle. Its subscribers will have also access to News Corp’s vast news content across its newly established newswire service and sports network, as well as newspapers such as The Daily Telegraph in NSW and The Courier-Mail in Queensland.

News Corp’s national community masthead network editor John McGourty says the company has “identified 50-plus sites where we think there’s an opportunity to grow new audiences in the future”.

“We plan to do those 50 over the next three years. We want to do this at a scalable, sustainable pace,” Mr McGourty said.

The expansion comes just weeks after News Corp shifted 76 of its community and regional newspapers, consisting of 375 journalists, to digital-only titles following its publishing restructuring announcement in May. Including the 16 purely digital titles set up over the past 18 months, News Corp now has 92 digital-only titles.

Two weeks ago, News Corp launched NCA NewsWire, which will deliver stories to its digital sites. The newswire will have a team of 32 journalists across six cities, including two picture editors.

“Hyperlocal journalism is the engine room of News Corp’s subscription business, close to 50 per cent of our subscriptions come from hyperlocal content, its content that readers can’t get anywhere else,” Mr McGourty said

“There are very few media businesses like News that can have journalists in so many suburbs and towns across the country.”

Of the first 15 titles, eight will be in Victoria, five in NSW and two in South Australia. Some will compete with Antony Catalano’s Australian Community Media and independent publishers for readers and advertisers. All but one of the 15 tit­les will be in regional areas, including Albury-Wodonga, Ballarat, Bendigo, Gippsland, Latrobe Valley, Mildura, Shepparton, Dubbo, Hawkesbury, Port Macquarie, Orange, Tamworth, Clare Valley and Port Lincoln.

Mr McGourty expects the new titles to generate as much as 90 per cent of its revenue from subscription and the rest from advertising. They are expected to break even after about 12 months, and then growth from there on in.

“The growth of our consumer revenue at a hyperlocal level is nothing short of staggering,” he said.

The first three titles will be in Clare Valley and Port Lincoln in South Australia, and Ballarat in Victoria.

“It really is just grassroots journalism, the ways it‘s always been and our audiences connecting with that in better and bigger ways than ever before,” Mr McGourty said

Mr McGourty has recruited three journalists to work on the new titles, and is looking for another dozen news-hungry reporters to join the team.

“It‘s important to us that those journalists are embedded in their community; that they are living and working in the communities that they’re serving so that they are true hyperlocal journalists.”

Mr McGourty said one of the 15 titles will be launched in Melbourne where it is trying to “appeal to the village atmosphere of parts of inner-city Melbourne” such as Yarra and Richmond.

“We’re trying to find out if we can grow an audience at a hyperlocal level inside a city. We’ve already done that in places like Adelaide, and Sydney.”

Mr McGourty said News Corp, publisher of The Australian, was focused on bedding down recent changes in Queensland before it looked at future growth opportunities.