 Good morning and welcome to the first day of the Australian National University's Crawford Leadership Forum. We've got a great topic for you this morning. This session is also being recorded. So if you have any FOMO about missing any of the other sessions, don't worry, you've made the right choice. You can go back and see any other sessions that are running at the same time as this. They'll be distributed by the good people at the Crawford Leadership Forum. I've got the most amazing panel assembled for you this morning to tackle this important topic of what's next for Australian news media and particularly how do we create an environment in which it can be healthy and trusted and funded and underpin the democracy that we have seen due to events around the world can be fragile. And so we have first a terrific senior journalist from Sky News, Laura Jays, who you'll see on Sky with her own program, but also throughout other programs and has been with Sky for quite a while. Mark Ryan, the executive director of the Judith Nielsen Institute, who is doing amazing work for creating the future of Australia's news media. And Simon Craira, who's formerly the general manager of Buzzfeed Australia and set up essentially Buzzfeed and now is the founder of a media tech startup, which is really exciting. It's called PS Media. He'll tell us about that and why it's needed. I refer you to the framing papers that we developed for this session. If you are a data person and I imagine many of you are, you'll like the material in that short framing paper, which uses a number of different resources. For example, the Public Interest Journalism Initiative, which has been doing a really good mapping project, newsroom mapping project over a number of years, capturing closures of newsrooms, changes in newsrooms, moving from analog to digital. And all of that data is available free to you. I've captured some of it in our framing paper. We have a discussion, a short discussion in the framing paper about misinformation and disinformation, and the differences between the two and the effect on our democracy. And generally what the interventions have been to try and resolve this incredibly taxing issue of how do we support news in Australia in such a way that particularly local news is sustained. So there are government policy mechanisms, but there are also private mechanisms and lots of innovation. There's much to feel really quite optimistic about, even though the starting point can appear quite pessimistic. So with that, I want to bring in our panel and let them share their wisdom with you. So if we can have everyone on screen, please, do we have everyone? We do. Terrific. OK. Marks on. Let's start with you, Laura. I mean, you've been a really... You've been holding people's feet to the fire for a long time with your interviewing. You're quite a tough interviewer. And I'd be really interested for you to share your views on how particularly social media has changed your job as a professional working journalist. Well, it's definitely more demanding, and it means that it is literally 24-7. So on a personal level, I think every journalist needs to manage that and there's no real correct answer there. It also means that if you don't engage with something, you'll be taken as tacit approval, which is not correct. So that's something that you also have to keep in mind when you're working in mainstream media, but also you just can't avoid that social media is still a part of your job. It also means that... I mean, there are huge benefits to it, that you reach more people than you would just through my program, like AM Agenda. And I think you reach new people as well. I mean, you're not on a diverse audience. They're less predictable. But I guess when you're looking at digital and TV, they're really different as well. And that's something that I've really noticed. On AM Agenda, for example, we have time to explain things, give analysis, and it's complemented by those interviews with politicians or special interest groups. And I feel like social media doesn't really have the patience for that. On Facebook, people are looking for confirmation bias. It's the same, but they're more angry, it seems, and probably more up for a fight. And on Instagram, people just want information or analysis in list form or 30-second explainer. So you really need to adapt for every platform. And of course, there are good things and bad things about that. Yes. So let's go to some of those. How has it changed politicians' behaviour in the media scrutiny? And specifically, have you adjusted in what you do with your program to navigate those challenges? That's a really good question because politicians want to be social media influencers, and they want to go viral for all the right reasons, of course. So I've noticed there's a real entertainment vibe that's crept in to the way our politicians engage. They practice their lines. They have them ready to go. And that's really their aim when they do an interview. So if I do an interview, for example, some politicians try to use that as an opportunity to get those lines out and are not at all phased about what questions are asked. I even think that sometimes they're not even really listening. Instead of them doing a selfie with their phone for Facebook, they use our slick lighting, our professional setup. And they then use selected parts of the interview to pump it up on their social media and get it out to their followers. So instead of actually wanting to be held to account, they don't care if they look like they're dodging a question and they just use it 30 seconds to make them look good. So here in Lias, the problem, if you don't want to be held to account and actually answer the questions that need to be asked, go straight to social media. Do the selfies. And what frustrates me so much is that modern politics has created this cohort of elected officials who don't appear to believe in anything. Every interview is about delivering lines, surviving and not actually saying anything that might be able to go on the record where they can be held to account in the future. So many have mastered that art of saying absolutely nothing, delivering sermons of vague motherhood statements that mean nothing. So what I found is that the good ones, they always come back and they're a pleasure to interview because they don't focus on focus groups actually believe in something and they've usually got a thicker skin. So the way I've adapted is I just don't have those people on anymore. You know, you kind of get hit up every day from different politicians to come on your show. And the ones that just consistently don't answer questions, I just don't have on because it's, they're boring television. They're not what viewers need or want. And frankly, they can do it on their social media accounts. So, and it's less transactional that way as well. So I was finding after being 15 years at Sky that, you know, if you give a tough interview to some politicians, they see that as some kind of slight against them and avoid you, you get put on a bit of a blacklist. So the way I operate now is, you know, I kind of put a show together that doesn't rely on me needing them to have them on my show, if you know what I mean. Absolutely. And I think you're the advocate for the viewer. And if you're feeling frustration, then they're feeling frustration. So by curating carefully and sometimes easing out those who won't answer the questions, you're actually doing the viewer a great service. So, yes, I understand. You're now Mark. Judith Nielsen Institute is absolutely unique in Australian philanthropy. We don't have a long tradition of corporate philanthropy in Australia. Can you just describe for us what it is and what you've learned about the regulatory environment for supporting public interest journalism? Because you set up in 2018. So you've got a few years under your belt now. Sure. Thanks, Megan. And good morning, everyone. Yeah, look, I think you're right. The Judith Nielsen Institute is somewhat unique in Australia, but we're really in the vanguard here of the trend that's been underway for a long, long time in the US and to a lesser extent in Europe. Over the last 20 years or so, there's been a proliferation of not-for-profit philanthropic organisations that are stepping into support journalism in all kinds of ways, setting up new platforms in and of themselves, playing the kind of role that we do in terms of helping to fund created journalism and new forms of journalism. So when Judith Nielsen came up with the idea to support journalism, she was really faced with a choice. One path she could have taken was to set up a new platform. So create a new Guardian online or a new news.com.au or what have you. In the end, we decided that it was best to set up this institute and try and do many things rather than one thing only. And the view we formed was that there were already enough platforms out there. It's not as though the world is starved of information or new and emerging platforms. But what we thought needed help was journalism that is working at the frontiers of journalism, at the frontiers of the media industry. Working to experiment with how to do contemporary journalism, how to get it to new audiences, how to retain those audiences. So I think when we set up, some people were under the mistaken belief that we were here to save journalism or to fund the existing business models, which by and large were failing business models. And that's not what we're about. What we're more about is helping those that are playing at the frontiers of new journalism and trying to help them make a difference. So even though we're well resourced, we don't have enough resources to solve all the problems overnight. But what we can do is provide some a bridge if you like or some temporary support to help newsrooms experiment, be a little bit more adventurous, be a little bit more courageous. And oftentimes it's only for one of relatively small amounts of money that can make the difference between a newsroom risking something and trying something or not. And we think that it's in the risking of these new things that the future of journalism, that's where the future of journalism is. So that's really what Jay and I is about. We do three things, Megan. We're a grant-making organization. So that's how we help newsrooms experiment and try new things. Secondly, we're developing an education program which we hope can help keep journalists fit the purpose in this rapidly changing world. Some of the things that Laura touched on on social media and technology and so on are obviously critical there. And thirdly, we hope to be a hub, a forum for really interesting and sometimes contentious debates about journalism, how it should be practiced, what's important, what's not, and how can we better serve the audience ultimately. And so that three-legged approach has led to 150 Bragg Grants to date. You've been pretty busy. So where do you see the area of most need? And what have you found when you've touched on this slightly but perhaps you could drill down a bit further, what's the best way to address the needs you've identified? Well, I think the best way is to not try and solve everything in one hit, Megan. The problem is so vast and so variable. And even if you take local news, for example, I'm sure Simon will talk to this in more detail, but how you solve a local news problem in a given market varies widely across the country. What might work in a regional city like Newcastle won't work in a small town in country Victoria or in remote Western Australia. So it's very hard to come up with a cookie cutter approach. And that's exactly why we set up Judith Milson Institute to be relatively small, able to move quickly, be completely unencumbered by bureaucracy or heavy administrative burdens. So we can move, we see a need somewhere, we can move quickly. But I stress that we're not here to, we're not, I guess, an angel investor in startup media companies. We're not here to save businesses. But where we see an opportunity or something innovative or a journalist or a newsroom is interested in trying something new that we believe has the potential to succeed, then we'll step in and support it. And it's not always money. Sometimes it's making connections. We've already built up quite an extensive international network of advisors and supporters. And oftentimes it's a matter of connecting people overseas with Australians to share ideas and swap notes on what worked in given markets around the world. So we play, I think, can play a really valuable brokerage role, as it were, between the media industry and technology and funding and all of these things together. So there's no one answer to your question, Megan. There are so many challenges that can be tackled in so many different ways. And that's why I think J&I is well set up to do that. That point you've made about making connections and including international connections, that's priceless. Businesses, small businesses, regional media, local media, any sites, really, it's very hard to do that on your own. So if you are an independent connector, that is so valuable for the industry. And I see that as a really key part of what the Judith Nielsen Institute's doing. Yeah, and what we're tapping into, Megan, is this global trend that's been underway for some time for greater collaboration. Even newsrooms that 10 or 20 years ago were fierce competitors are now prepared to contemplate collaborating where it makes sense to and where it doesn't impinge on their commercial imperatives. They're realising that they can grow the cake, they can grow the pie bigger. They can each get more out of any given project by collaborating. And that means collaborating with competitors, collaborating with people like ourselves at J&I, collaborating with other corporations, with universities and so on. So I think the industry, even though as you said at the outset, there's been a lot of gloom around the industry, I think there's a lot of reason for optimism in this collaboration and these new ways of thinking about journalism. I agree. And what a natural segue. So, just a little bit into your background, Simon, because you're in a great position to describe some of the macroeconomic factors, shaping the current state of news media in Australia. You would have seen that as the first editor and then the general manager of BuzzFeed Australia. So can you just share with us what you see as the key macroeconomic factors shaping the current climate of this media? Sure. Thanks, Megan. And it was interesting to hear Mark talk. And I agree that there's lots of reasons for hope, but also there is this long now systemic kind of issue of two decades of failing business models. And we've basically seen that the business model that supports news locally, the news media, and specifically, I think most acutely the local level, has really, really been massively fragmented. So after my career, I began my love affair of news, delivering newspapers as a kid and really heavy bags of newspapers. And then my first job was at the Times of London in the late 90s, covering the first dot-com boom. And at that stage, the Sunday Times newspaper was this gigantic slab, huge slab of newspaper, similar to the big papers in Australia. And unfortunately, as we know, the classified advertising that used to bring those rivers of gold that funded these really, really big news organizations and huge teams of reporters has massively declined in the last couple of decades. And in Australia, first of all, we saw the kind of growth of the classified advertising migrating to the internet, to the domain, to REA, to car sales to seek. And initially, that was News Corp and Fairfax kind of cannibalizing their parent company's revenue streams. And then over the last decade, there's been this rise of the Silicon Valley-based platforms, particularly Google and Facebook. And they, as we've seen, have hoovered up about 75% of the digital advertising. So that was the environment that BuzzFeed was kind of born into in 2013, 2014, with a huge investment from a company called Andreas and Horowitz initially in Silicon Valley. So putting in a lot of money, we very quickly built this big audience in Australia, which was predominantly on the social platforms, on Facebook, on Twitter, on YouTube, big, big audiences. But what we found by the end of the last decade was even that with the huge resources from a venture perspective that we had, companies like BuzzFeed, like Vox, like Vice, we couldn't make enough of a buck on the social platforms as brands increasingly went directly to consumers. And as those platforms, as we know, and as we've seen in Australia, there's been a big kind of intervention from the government to try and readdress this playing field. So I feel that actually in Australian terms, on this kind of national level, those looking for national and international news have never really had more options. We've obviously had those companies that I was part of. We've also had the Guardian setting up here, the Mail, the New York Times, most recently at the Washington Post. So there's this huge amount of choice and local players like Junkie and Pedestrian. So there's a lot of innovation, but I feel that the critical gap is at the local level. And I think it's a tragedy, really, that over the last four or five years, Australians often have known more locally, have known more about what the guy in the White House is tweeting about than they've known about what's happening on their block or in their suburb on their town because often we've increasingly seen this huge trend of papers closing. And that was 100 papers or so closing over the last decade, local newspapers. That really intensified last year. And last year, basically since the beginning of the pandemic, we've now had more than 200 local newspapers closing. There's some glimmers of hope. There's some hyperlocals getting going. But what we've seen internationally is that often they run out of gas. They've got a lot of energy. They're usually funded by redundancy payments to start with, but they basically run out of gas. And so we think this trend, I think this trend of news deserts kind of expanding and growing in our regions is a huge problem. That disappearance of local news is really, it's bad for the reporting of councils. It's bad for people knowing about what's happening in their towns, in their cities, in their suburbs, about courts, about schools. And so I think what we've seen internationally, what we're concerned about here in Australia is that without that local news coverage to keep local officials and power accountable, then corruption goes up and there was all these negative kind of social outcomes. Right. So as a result of those conditions, you've just very articulately described, we've seen a number of healthy interventions by government. From an end user perspective, someone who wants to keep news media healthy, what's worked and what hasn't? Well, I think obviously we saw, after the Xenophon policy change to ownership rules, that the regional and small publishers' innovation fund over three years put $60 million into the regional local sector. And that was a number of different things. As we know, it was scholarships, it was cadet programs. And in particular, it was this fund for three years that was devoted to helping small publishers, regional publishers innovate. And so that helped some of them transition and I worked with five publishers last year in the regional space. And so the reality is that for a lot of those, they were just starting their journey. And they were, and crazily really, at the end of the last decade and the start of this, they were just starting to kind of get websites up and running and think about digital revenue, despite having seen a decade at least of their revenue declining, their print advertising revenue declining, double digit every year. So that was, as a start, it was very useful, but it certainly only helped some of them on their journey. And then obviously we've seen this kind of world first mandatory bargaining code legislation that has made I think a really profound difference addressing some of the power imbalances that we've seen that have really affected the practice of public interest journalism. I mean, I think what we know is that the legislation has passed, but because the publishers, the platforms haven't been designated, these discussions are happening kind of behind closed doors. And so while we know that there's tens of millions of dollars coming from the platforms into media companies, it's been reported that maybe 90% of that revenue, of that money is coming to four or five major big companies. And so at the local level, the regional level, I think there's concern that the code is not really, you know, not necessarily going to make a kind of profound difference. It's great to see last week, Google doing this deal with Contra Press Association. Now with 80 publishers are going to be beneficiaries of that. So I think the hope is that we see and we track over time and we see that this is actually fueling and funding public interest journalism. So it's, you know, it's very important. And I do think that there's going to be the need for more government interventional support, particularly at this local and regional level. Yeah. Laura, I know you're a big city girl, but you have spoken publicly about the need to protect local and regional news gathering. And you've pointed to the dangers of, and I love this expression of views, press release journalism in communities that don't have adequate coverage by journalists. So tell us, what are you seeing occur and why is it dangerous? Well, there used to be a pathway in journalism, particularly when I started and for the decades before that you would almost like a doctor if you like, not that I'm equating them to, don't worry about that. But you used to start in the regions and work your way up to the cities. And that was like the training ground of a journalist and you really cut your teeth. So I think what we used to see is young journalists really understanding the regions and the bush from very early in their careers. And even when they did end up in the city, there was great empathy and sympathy for, you know, the plight of, and the problems they're facing in the bush. But that doesn't happen so much anymore. Mainly because there's more options in the city straightaway. So there is more employers that you can go to. But regional journalism, I reckon is in pretty diastrates at the moment. And thank you to the hardworking journalists who do operate outside of the cities. Because when I say hardworking, the stuff they have to get across in one day can be extraordinary. And there's simply, you know, not enough of them. So we're seeing, you know, this ingrained trend now where some local papers and radio stations are so stretched that they will literally print a government or department media release word for word. Not a question asked. And this is not a criticism. It's just a reality of what they're having to face. So TV journalists in the region, for example, can cover three or four stories a day, which they produce themselves. But in the city, a journalist would do one and have two producers helping them do that. Imagine it's same in the papers and radio. So, I mean, that's just the reality of what they're facing, I think. And that becomes a vicious cycle, doesn't it? Because if you're too stretched, the quality suffers, and that might increase the migration to international news that Simon spoke about. Exactly. Oh, also, you know, here at Sky, we are a national broadcaster. We simmercast on Free to Air to eight million people in the regions, which is great, because you've got this mainstream company that does have reach in there. So, you know, for example, my work on the show, I have huge opportunities to cover the headline issues in the regions, whether it be laver shortages, agriculture visas, water issues, and Zoom, which we're all very well acquainted with now, means that we have that huge reach and are not bound by who I can get on the program in the cities or who has access to a studio. So that's really great. But is it enough? No. But it is important that the cities also see this regional news as well. I can't cover regional stories day by day by day because it doesn't speak to enough of the audience, if you know what I mean. So, look, I still think it's important for the cities to know how we get food on the table, see what grain prices are doing and how that affects them and see what closed borders and trade borders do and all that kind of thing. But when you're talking about local journalism, regional papers and radio stations, they just can't be replaced. And I just don't think there is the profit there anymore. And I think it's been proven that private companies used to get in the regions. That's just not there. And that's a marker reality. ABC is taxpayer funded. It has a huge responsibility here, I think, and probably needs to step up a little bit more to reprioritise the bush. And they do a wonderful job. But there are still gaps. So a publicly funded broadcaster should be covering, I think, sections of the media that the private sector doesn't. So it makes a bit of sense to me there. So you see an increasing role in regional and local for the ABC, the public? Yeah, and I do think it does a really good job in the regions that have the ABC have the radio. And of course, everyone can access the website and they do have a large cohort of regional unions. But I mean, it's a behavioural cultural thing as well. Radio stations are so important in the regions, perhaps even more so than they are in the cities. So I just think that those gaps in the markets and the regional papers as well, they're so stretched that I think maybe there's an opportunity for the ABC to fill those gaps even more because as I said before, private companies are private companies. You can't avoid that they're there for profit. And if those profits, they can't get in the bush anymore. I mean, there is a philanthropic element to all of this and a social licence. But as a sustainable business model, it's just not there. So we have to get ahead of it. Well, not there yet. And we'll hear a bit more about that. Exactly. What do you, Mark? I think your international experience is really valuable. When you were setting up Judith Niosen Institute, you conducted a global study tour. What were the international policy settings that you encountered that really impressed you and you thought that could work here? Yeah, I mean, I saw a lot obviously. And the experience varies depending on where you're looking. The US is a bit of a paradox in the sense that it's probably the most energetic, risk-taking, lively marketplace for what we're talking about. But it does so almost completely devoid of any government support. The American culture is such that it just cannot swallow the idea of government funding of journalism by and large, with one or two very, very modest exceptions. Europe is very different. There's huge public funding that flows into journalism, particularly in the Scandinavian countries. So it does vary widely. In terms of models, I mean, I think to the point we're talking about local news, I didn't see a silver bullet solution, but I certainly saw examples or elements of things that we could try here. One project that I like to direct people to is something called the Colorado Media Project. And I think that therein lies something of a potential, not solution, but response, policy response for Australia. Now, the funding that Simon referred to that grew out of the Xenophon amendments or proposals, I don't think anybody would argue that they were ideal in their conception or their execution. When governments try and fund things, it gets very lumpy, very bureaucratic, very slow-moving, very hard to be innovative and move quickly. And I think that was a big part of the experience of that, let's call it the Xenophon project. The Colorado Media Project, I think, has elements we could learn from in that it assembled a diverse group of media experts. And by the way, not all journalists, importantly, a lot of very experienced business people as well and technology people. And they basically created a platform that became a service center, if you like, for local media in Colorado. And they were very open-minded about what they'd support and who they would support and how they would support them. And as far as I can tell, it's been a big success. So it's funded through a whole range of different funding. There's a lot of philanthropic funding that goes into it. I think even weirdly in America, there's some government funding, I think, from the state government, perhaps. But the trick there, I think, that the problem they're starting to solve there is that they're not setting out with a hard and fast set criteria about what they're going to support and how they're going to support it. They're much more fluid, much more ready to take on new ideas and move quickly. And to use that Silicon Valley cliche, fail quickly and then move on to the next thing. And I think that's what we could benefit from here in Australia. People like Simon are out there coming up with great ideas to re-energize and reinvigorate local journalism, local news. What sort of help does he need? Where could government funding help? And it doesn't have to be big dollars. This is the other thing. When you talk about support for an industry, and I think you could make the case that the media industry journalism is somewhat unique. I mean, it is a pillar of our democracy. We all like to say that, but does government pay a due regard in the sense of funding that? So we might come up with a plan to support the steel industry or the agricultural sector, or even the art sector generally for that matter. Do we pay the same attention to journalism? And for relatively small amounts of money, I think you can do a hell of a lot. Even the 60, 80 million dollars that Simon referred to, I think you could double that or treble that or quadruple that, still not make a dent on the national budget, but have a huge impact on our civic life, on our democracy, on getting to local communities, the sorts of important issues that Simon mentioned about what's happening in your backyard. So I think there's an increasing role for government. I agree with Laura that the ABC could play a bigger role. I know that they've sort of tippy-tied into this area of providing some of their content to local news outlets. I think there could be more of that kind of innovative thinking, particularly in the regions and in local news. They have this huge network, huge resources and infrastructure. Let's put it to work, make it work more efficiently, make it work harder. So I think that it's time to, all of the measures that have been taken by government to support media have been piecemeal, they've been reactive, they've arisen out of political fixes at the last minute, late at night in the Senate. How about we step back, take a bigger, broader look at things and have another go at it, but in a decade long or two decade long, with a two decade long perspective. Now, I think the digital code, mandatory code exercise was fantastic. I'm really heartened to see that a lot of the funding that's coming from the code is flowing back into journalism. A lot of people are cynical about the tech platforms, but I happen to think that Google in particular should be applauded for the focus they're putting on local and regional news. I know that they're keen to put money into that. I know that news corporation like that is looking to reinvest or invest some of that money into training of journalists, not just in their own news rooms, but in regional Australia. So these are some of the green shoots or the more optimistic points, developments that are happening out there that I think we should be focusing on. I agree with you that it doesn't take huge amounts of money. And while your point is well made that perhaps the Xenophon project was reactive, it only required small amounts for particularly regional media organisations to stand up a website. They just didn't have the cash at hand to build a digital version of their traditionally analogue product. And particularly now that we're in a COVID environment, being able to distribute news digitally, which they didn't have access to before, has made a huge difference. And so while not perfect, it did allow dozens of small businesses, small local media businesses to go digital where they couldn't before. It did, I think you're right, Megan, but importantly to Simon's point about sustainability. And this is where things like the Colorado media project or even, you know, Jay and I has been working with Simon and others in the hyperlapal area to come up with some kind of solution that can help these businesses become sustainable. Simon hit the nail on the head. These things start off with a burst of enthusiasm, high energy, often relying on one individual and it's just not sustainable. And often that individual might be a great journalist but hopeless at business. They might be greater technology but can't write a sentence. So people need all kinds of support. And I think if we could think about developing some kind of, you know, service center, some kind of hub of practical and intellectual and financial support to help these businesses become sustainable beyond that first burst of enthusiasm. So yeah, I spent a lot of time off as Mark knows over the last kind of 18 months looking internationally before the pandemic and taking a couple of study trips to the US. And I think that there's this huge ecosystem of innovation in the US and North America. It's often funded by philanthropy. And then as Mark says in Europe, it's often funded by government support as well and different support coming from, in different ways from government funded bodies. What we found in Australia and we've been fundraising since the start of the year here is that despite the last two or three months being basically the frophiest kind of venture capital market in Australian history, huge amounts of funds are going from VCs into all sorts of technological innovation. It's going into kind of fintechs and health techs and ag techs and AI techs and climate techs. And you'd have to go way down below kind of 50 before you find the dollars going into media. There's like a couple of small social media kind of startups one in Perth, one in Adelaide. And I think that's, we found that really challenging to actually get people because people, they understand and they know that there's systemic issues in media. They know that the platforms have got a lot of power and that a lot of the dollars go there. And so they wonder if, you know, can a startup like mine kind of get up, you know, in this kind of environment. So PS media is basically designed to try and take the longer term view. We don't think these problems will be solved overnight. And so we're coming out with a really kind of different type of business model for local news and it's profit for purpose. It's developing what we believe are innovative revenue streams that aren't reliant on like the display and classified and programmatic that we don't see really making too much of a difference. So a lot of big focus on data and creating data that will power our journalism, but also data that will become a commercial product kind of recurring revenue from people. And we want to go deeper than subscribers or members and actually have people become co-owners or our business. So we're basically building a kind of collaborative local news platform. It's going to be co-designed, co-owned by the communities that we serve. And our belief is that we're going to do this together with them. So at the moment we're fundraising, we're going to start a pilot, our first pilot in October in a city community. Then we're going to do one in an urban fringe community and then we're going to do one in a regional community. And we're going to try and understand, first of all, what are their information problems? What are the deficits? What are the things that they need to understand that each other and their community at large better? And then ultimately what we're seeking to do is improve media diversity in that particular place. And then by working with this community, the community reduced information deficits, the problems that they have, that news that's catered specifically to them could solve. And then ultimately we want to kind of increase kind of accountability of those in power. And so it's really working with communities, learning from them, helping to kind of try and solve their problems. And then what we believe through our different approach, going deeper, like I said, than subscription or membership, is that actually we saw the 500,000 people that signed Mr. Rudd's petition to Parliament last year, concerned generally about the concentration of kind of media ownership in this country. And so we think that actually people, and that doesn't just, I worked for News Corp for a long time. I don't think it necessarily just applies to News Corp. I think people are frustrated by their inability to control or to have agents in the ABC, which they fund as well. And so we think that asking people to kind of come along on the journey with us and to actually try and make a kind of more diverse media on the local level is something that we're hoping Australians are really going to respond to. Hi, Maggie. Laura was making the point earlier about how important radio is. And I've just provided you with a live example underlining her exact points. Because I live in regional Australia and the internet is catchy, but radio always works. I'm back. And here we are. I'm going to ask you one more question before we go to Q&A. And it's a point that both you and Mark have made about collaboration and collaborative models. Because you've highlighted this emerging role or emerging model of the collaborative body. And sometimes it's housed within a university. That's mission is to share learnings and resources between news and media organisations. How important are these collaborative bodies and how do you think they'll influence the future shape of the Australian news media? Yeah, so I've engaged with quite a lot. And Mark mentioned this hyperlocal kind of project that they, J and I have been working on to try and provide some support for this emerging sector. So in particular, there's a couple of really interesting organisations. There's one in New Jersey. New Jersey is the state size of the New South Wales, but at the University of Montclair, they've got this centre for collaborative media, a cooperative media, and they're basically bringing local news publishers from around the state, actually around the whole of the US to kind of collaborate to support one another, to share insights, to share learnings, and also to help kind of, they do research focusing on emerging kind of trends and kind of business models or best practices to bring people together. Similarly in Cardiff in the UK, which is a very well-renowned journalism school, they have this centre of community journalism, and that's a comparable centre doing the same kind of things for, it's focused on Wales in the UK, but also the whole of Europe. There's also institutions like the Tau Centre, Tau Night Centre at the City University of New York, which has spent basically a decade now running kind of entrepreneurial journalism projects and classes, really with amazing industry expertise, and that's focused on education, it's focused on training kind of people like myself or other people in legacy media to be entrepreneurial. And I think that when we see those organisations, things like the Reuters Institute at the University of Oxford, things like the Neiman Labs at Harvard, there's these organisations, usually linked to universities, that are providing this ecosystem of kind of collaboration of sharing best practice, of helping publishers come together and to try to figure out sustainable futures for news in the digital age. I'm on the board of UTS's centre for media transition, and they're looking at these and thinking about is there an opportunity or a need for this kind of body in Australia? Similarly, I was at an event in Canberra on Friday or virtual event in Canberra with the News and Media Research Centre, and they were talking about the need. So I'm hoping that there will be some sense of the academy helping to kind of foster this kind of spirit of collaboration here and work with publishers and with government to try and kind of kickstart some of this stuff here. It's definitely part of the optimism that Mark spoke about earlier. Now the moderators in a Zoom environment get to switch us off to think about the virtual world. So at this point, I'm going to say thank you for all of those who joined us today to listen to this amazing panel, and thank you very much, panel. Laura Jays from Sky News, Mark Ryan from the Judith Nielsen Institute, Simon Craira from PS Media, I feel enriched from this discussion and I really appreciate your time. And I hope everyone gets to enjoy other parts of the ANU's Crawford Leadership Forum, which has an excellent lineup. So with that, good morning. Thank you. We'll see you again. Thank you.