 Welcome everyone. Once again, let's talk about media and communication. I have invited Andrea Carson from La Trobe University to explore with us funding models for Australian digital born news and to let us know more about the influence of digital platforms, regulations and how successful outlets build strong brands and how they diversify the income or the foster audience trust. We'll jump on that very fast. Andrea, welcome to our episode. Thank you for having me. Great to be here. Andrea, I read your article and you mentioned the lack of investigation into the long term sustainability, the long term stability of digital native media in relation to platform dependency. So did I get it right? Let us know more about what made you study digital native media in Australia specifically. Yes, that's right. For those that don't know, Australia's got a really highly concentrated media ownership landscape. And it's been dominated by a couple of players over the last 20, 30 years. And this was an opportunity to look over time of what was happening in the digital native space and also to see what role digital platforms were playing with the evolution of digital native media. But Australia is also a good place to look at this question, not only because of the concentrated media ownership, but because it's got world first legislation that came into being in 2021, which is the news media bargaining code. And so we wanted to see what that change to the regulation environment also was having on digital startups. So quite a promising background. So what are the main findings, the main highlights of your study? Well, I guess firstly, and perhaps most concerningly, was that attrition was high amongst digital natives. We did a case study approach. We looked at seven digital natives in detail starting with 2017. And we re-interviewed the same editors or those that were now in the editorial position over three data points. One was 2017. The next one was just before COVID hit in Australia in 2020. And then after COVID in the recovery in 2023. And we found that over that seven year period of the seven that we were looking at, only four had survived. And that digital platforms played a nuanced role in the survival of digital natives. They could both help and hinder digital startups. And as I'm sure listeners here are aware that those that became too dependent on digital natives were under threat when things like the algorithm changed and therefore they lost audience share or access to audience. But on the upside, some of the digital platforms also provided very critical funding to digital natives. For example, during COVID when many media organisations were unable, weren't attracting advertisers. There were major job losses going on. And the platforms Google and Meta namely were offering grants to try and help digital natives during that period. And then of course the news media marketing code came into being in 2021. This is a competition law that was used to force Google and Meta, namely Facebook to provide funding for news content they use on their platforms. And there's other parts of the world that are looking at this. And what we found there was the news media marketing code actually created winners and losers. I assume some practical implications for this recently launched outlets and tell us also about some public policy implications of this. So the policy implications is that we have provided some insight for media companies into what works and what doesn't. And of those that survived, what worked for them was that they were not so reliant on the algorithms of the digital platforms that they were able to get audience to come directly to them. And the way that the media outlets did that was to build up their brand capital and to build trust with their audience. That meant being transparent about native advertising on their site, having evidence-based journalism and other quality indicators. It also showed that one of the policy implications was with the news media marketing code that while it's been celebrated in many parts of the world and also in Australia, it also had some unintended policy consequences. And that was for those that did not get funding through the news media marketing code. And these were voluntary deals that were done. They were at a competitive disadvantage to those that got extra funding. And for the audience, it may not be quite as aware of how the news media marketing code works. It delivered $200 million a year to journalism in Australia. So those digital startups that got some of that money were able to poach staff from other organisations that couldn't afford to pay the same amount for their journalists. And this is pretty timely finding at the moment because these deals are typically three years long and they're all starting to expire. And it's very topical in Australia as we speak because Metta has announced it's not going to renew any of those deals. And that means that this funding stream that some of the digital natives and other media organisations were so reliant on is no longer going to be there unless the politicians get into a real fight with Metta. So that's an unfolding story. And the final thing that we can learn in the public policy space is that it is a nuanced story about platforms. They're not wholly good and they're not wholly bad that they have played a role in supporting public interest journalism, but that platform dependency is not a good thing for the longevity of digital startups. Let's follow up on that and look ahead in future research. So you indicated now and also you wrote in the article the limited scope of the study and the uncertainty regarding the news media bargaining code. You also mentioned before that the study gets COVID, the COVID time in the way. So how did this impact the research and what are some opportunities for future research? Yeah, it's a great question. The digital nature of the study obviously lends itself to revisiting the four that remain. But four is getting a bit thin in terms of case studies. So there's an opportunity there to expand it to other digital natives. We note that perhaps a limitation of the study was the timing of the interviews that the COVID pandemic, these were really seismic events in the introduction of the world first bargaining code may have both exacerbated and promoted digital natives. And that if we looked at other time periods, we might have got some different findings on that. And we also found that those that did survive, that some of them, I guess it's an opportunity there for us to continue on with that study and revisit and see how they go now that there's so much uncertainty around the news media bargaining code. And this is one of the most important pillars of this conversation. What are some personal reflections after conducting this research? Because for me, after reading the article with this conversation, some of the follow-up questions I would have were probably the importance of trust and brand for the media outlets. And also how complex platform dependency actually is not wholly good or bad, as you said before, especially for these digital-born news outlets. So what are some of your reflections? Well, I think the first thing is, and this goes back to how we began this conversation, and that is that Australia still has a really concentrated media market and the digital startup environment is still a very fragile one. And it's quite limited. And this is important because with only a few media owners and limited choices for local news generation for audiences in Australia, I mean, of course they can get news from all around the world. So we're talking more specifically Australian news. This has got real implications in a world that increasingly is concerned about misinformation, that quality journalism and journalism that's evidence-based is one way of perhaps negating the effects of misinformation and particularly populations, not just in Australia but elsewhere that find it difficult to discern between fact and fiction. And quality journalism is one way to help the public differentiate between trusted sources of information and fake news. Well, perfect. Andrea, this has been a very long time, but if someone just came in in our conversation and just wanted to know two, three sentences about this episode, so the punchline, what would it be? Well, one of the things I haven't spoken about yet is digital natives offer a slightly different type of journalism to traditional news organisation. Their style is very much focused on bringing the reader in and having a conversation with them. So instead of the old fashion inverted pyramid where you've got the who, what, where, when at the top of the story and then the quotes that back up the evidence, what we see with digital natives is that they like tone and opinion and attitude and they check that into storytelling and right at the centre of their journalism is the importance of storytelling. And the editors that I spoke to made no apology for that. They wanted to be impartial, but to be a trusted voice for their audience. The other thing is that many of them knew their audience very well and appealed to a particular niche, whether that was reporting on the environment or Indigenous affairs or whether their niche was politics. And the other thing I would say is that relationship with the audience that it wasn't the broadcast model of talking at the audience. It's very much about getting the audience in and having a dialogue and being a site of sharing ideas, commentary and a place for story tip-offs as well. Great episode. Andrea, thank you very much. Pleasure. For those who are watching us on YouTube, in the description you can find all the resources, all the links, all the materials of this conversation with Andrea and also the link to the Let's Talk About Media and Communication website there are more information about subscribing to our newsletter, our podcast platforms, follow us on Twitter, etc.