Plucky Perth paper The Post presses its own case for survival
The Post’s new printing press may have also opened up for the publication of the Australian Financial Review on the other side of the Nullarbor.
Arguably Perth’s most loved newspaper is poised to break Seven West Media’s printing monopoly.
The Post, an independent newspaper in Perth’s wealthy western suburbs, has unveiled a new high-speed printing press two years after the sudden closure of the last remaining independent printer in Western Australia left it facing an existential crisis.
The facility means The Post will no longer have to continue its uneasy commercial relationship with Seven West Media, and may have just opened up a path for Nine Entertainment to resume its publication of the Australian Financial Review on the other side of the Nullarbor.
The Post editor Bret Christian said plans for the printing press began on the same day that news of the closure of the previous printer broke, and had ramped up further after the AFR ceased printing in the WA.
The high-speed press – believed to be the only one west of Adelaide not owned by Seven West – will take only half a day to print The Post’s weekly edition, giving it plenty of capacity to service any other independent newspapers looking for a new printer.
The Post has long been a thorn in the side of Seven West Media and its daily paper The West Australian.
While Perth is often described as a one-newspaper town, The Post has long had a devoted (and deep-pocketed) readership across the city’s wealthiest suburbs.
About 50,000 copies are distributed across the so-called Golden Triangle of Perth, which takes in Cottesloe, Peppermint Grove and City Beach. Its pages are full of advertisements for WA’s most lavish waterfront properties and it enjoys the sort of consistent advertising demand that much bigger newspapers can now only dream of.
It not only cuts The West’s lunch commercially but also editorially. While the newsrooms of most community newspapers have been gutted in recent decades, The Post has always punched above its weight with breaking news and exclusives.
The Post is tapped into its community in a way like few community papers anywhere. Much of that stems from Christian, an old-school exponent of proper shoe-leather journalism.
He spent decades reporting on the Claremont serial killings and his book Stalking Claremont was the definitive account of that saga.
He also worked to overturn the wrongful murder convictions of John Button and Darryl Beamish, which in turn informed his book Presumed Guilty.
Seven West Media’s monopoly on printing had caused concerns about more than just printing costs. There have long been fears in Perth media circles about the potential for those inside The West to get sneak peeks of the looming scoops within other papers courtesy of the digital files sent to the printing presses ahead of publication.
The AFR announced it would stop printing in WA in May 2024.
At the time, the AFR claimed that Seven West had said it would double the AFR’s printing cost in what the paper described as an “abuse of power”.
Seven West at the time said its increased costs were nothing more than a commercial decision.
The AFR since then has only been available in WA as a digital edition.
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