10 minutes with… Murray Bridge News managing editor Peri Strathearn
Business Insight turned the mic back onto Murray Bridge News managing editor Peri Strathearn, and asked him about the highs and lows of running a news website in regional South Australia.
How did you get your start in journalism?
I actually got my first job after I was invited to judge a battle of the bands in Port Pirie. I’d thought I was headed for a career in radio – I’d read the news as a volunteer at Fresh FM and Radio Adelaide, and had been hired to mentor young people producing a radio show for Three D. Then a guy who I’d been in a band with invited me to come up and be a judge for this competition at the high school where he’d ended up working. On the night I met the late Greg Mayfield, then the editor of The Recorder. You’re doing journalism, he said – why don’t you come and do some work experience with me? So I went in the next day, unshaven, in a T-shirt and jeans, and wrote a couple of stories for him. He called me the next week and asked if I’d like a job.
Why did you start MBN?
I came into the newspaper industry right as things really started taking a turn for the worse. When I started at the Murray Bridge paper in 2012, there were about 20-25 of us in the office. When I quit in 2020, there were three of us left. In that context, I’d been thinking about going out on my own for a while. I was already writing 90 per cent of the stories every week, so why should I do that work for someone else? COVID really just gave me the impetus I needed. The newspaper shut down for what turned out to be only a few months, but there were still stories to be told, so I kept on telling them.
What were some of the major difficulties in starting a news publication?
As a journalist, I didn’t know a damn thing about advertising when I started, or about running a business. I made it all up as I went along. But the community has been tremendously supportive, right from the start.
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How has MBN grown over the years?
Grants – non-government grants – have been the major catalyst for our growth. We were one of 12 publications globally to win funding from Substack, the US web platform we used when we started; we’ve had project-based funding from Meta, via the Walkley Foundation, and from the Google News Initiative. What that funding did was help us increase the services we offer to our community: we hired a journalist, put on a revenue person and opened an office. There have been ups and downs over the past five years, and it’s still hard to make a buck in this industry. But we’re having a red hot go.
Do you run into any unique challenges as an independent publisher?
Challenges and opportunities. The single biggest challenge, one I didn’t anticipate at the start, is the fact that without being part of a large network, we struggle to attract advertising from large corporations or government, the clients who really have cash to spend. Small businesses in regional centres can’t afford to spend to much on ads, especially during a pandemic, then a flood, then a drought. But there are big benefits to being independent, too: flexibility, accountability to our community, the ability to move quickly when opportunities arise.
What’s been the community’s response to MBN?
As I said, people have been great. In a community of 20,000 or so, I initially hoped to attract 250 paying subscribers in 12 months. We hit that target in nine weeks, and now have a strong subscriber base for a community of this size. But the best part is that people will stop me in the street, or at the shops, or send me messages at all hours with ideas for stories, or just to say thank you. I love that about regional journalism.
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What gap did it fill in the market?
Rather than being a business built around advertising, we aim to serve our audience first: to connect, uplift and empower local people. We also wanted to guarantee the people of the Murraylands a reliable local news service, and to build a business model that would outlast the decline of print. Even though the local paper is still going under new owners, I think we’re the ones who set the agenda and have a much bigger community following. And we’re trying stuff no other local publisher has tried, like our screen network – we have about 15 internet-connected TVs showing our content in doctors’ waiting rooms, cafes and shopping centres. It’s working for us, and now we’re advising publishers elsewhere around Australia who want to learn from our success.
What are some of the pros and cons to running the site under a subscription model?
The big con is obviously access. There’s tension between the need to raise money and the need for essential public information to be available to all. We manage this with a very porous paywall: everything is paywalled except for most of it. Information about public health and safety, or elections, or fundraisers – all of that we make free to read. If a story is basically a re-written press release, we’ll make that free to read, because we haven’t really added any value. So only about 30 per cent of our stories are paywalled … then we make those free to read four weeks after publication anyway! It might sound counter-intuitive, but it allows us to strike a balance between reach, with free stories, and providing value for our paying subscribers.
There’s also the problem of population in a regional centre. If we produced the same number of stories, and achieved the same paid subscriber conversion rate, in a city of 100,000 people, we’d be laughing. We’d have a bigger team and I could take holidays more regularly. But a city of 20,000 people still deserves a high quality news service, and that’s what we want to provide.
What’s your favourite part of the job?
You might think journalism in a regional centre would be a bit ho-hum, but it’s the opposite: whenever anything interesting is happening, you’re the one on the spot. I love being able to guide local conversations about major issues in the same way that a Laurie Oakes or a David Speers might on a national level. But most of all I love finding stuff out, meeting people and learning about their passions. I want to know everything and write about everyone, and bit by bit, I’m getting there.
Where do you see MBN in five years?
Heck, continuing to exist would be an achievement. We’re yet to see how well the current generation of newsletter- or social media-based digital news start-ups weathers the years. Having a national association, the Local and Independent News Association, of which we were a founding member and I am a board member, has helped. But no, I’ll set my sights higher than that. I’d like us to be better resourced to meet our community’s information needs, with more staff on more hours; I’d like us to be more closely connected with the independent news sector across Australia, sharing innovative ideas; and I’d love this organisation to be seen as an example of what is possible in the regions, which too many in this industry seem to take for granted.
What advice would you give a 2020 Peri?
You don’t know what you’re getting yourself into here, but you know what? Do it anyway. It’s going to be a blast.
