Australia’s comfortable suburban middle-class used last week’s Victorian election to echo the sentiment of the Wentworth byelection — announcing that they’ve become decidedly uncomfortable with the product being delivered by the country’s media outrage factories.
Ever since, Australia’s pundits have been chattering about the existential crisis of the Liberal Party. But it’s worse for media that have structured their business model on an audience built on outrage-driven clicks and hits.
News Corp’s Melbourne franchise, the Herald Sun, has found that its “African gang” focus has not only placed the company’s tabloids on the wrong side of history, it’s placed it on the wrong side of the market. Its 12 month campaign hasn’t survived social media’s ridicule of Dutton’s restaurant fear over-reach, or the actual lived experience of the city’s residents.
Meanwhile, in Sydney, the Macquarie radio network has discovered that it’s not just the content, it’s the packaging as well. Alan Jones found this out with the very eastern suburbs issue of advertising on the Opera House.
If it’s a Muppet government, then the outrage media are Statler and Waldorf shouting out from the balcony to the grumpy old man demographic.
It’s worked well for Fox News, playing to a more rural, regional and religious US market. This spring’s elections show that, in Australia, it’s not a big enough market to offset the loss of the suburbs — either politically or financially. The issues often used to mobilise this demographic — race-tinged reporting on crime, terrorism, climate change denial and homophobia hidden under “religious freedom” — have turned out to be precisely the wrong issues to attract just about any other demographic.
The Australian indicates that there’s an audience prepared to pay for a more intellectualised outrage mixed in with some decent journalism. And the success of the more journalistically traditional news.com.au shows that less outrage and more mass-audience news can work as an advertising driven online offering.
But News Corp has built political influence with its tabloids dominating the outrage economy. The Liberals — and, in NSW, Labor too — have found it worthwhile to feed the tabloids with “exclusive” drops and “tough on crime” rhetoric to keep them on-side.
The rejection of the Victorian Liberals by suburban voters is equally a rejection of the tabloid influence and its business model. Without influence, the tabloids lose value. While Victoria may be brushed off as “the Massachusetts of Australia” (that is, it almost always goes left), the model has similarly failed to influence in successive elections in Australia’s Texas — Queensland.
Political commentators are watching to see how the federal government pivots in reaction to the losses. But for media watchers, equally interesting will be to see whether News Corp pivots. It’s a company that likes to boast that it backs winners, most famously bragging after the 1992 British election, “It’s The Sun what won it”.
The rare recent examples of support for labour parties in Australia and the UK has depended on those parties engaging with the company’s tabloid agenda and, often, supporting the company’s business interests. The fate of the Rudd government suggests that it brings only short-term gain for far greater long-term pain.
Since “Kevin 07”, News Corp has become increasingly enmeshed in the political infrastructure of the right, through The Australian’s op-ed pages and the nether reaches of Sky after dark. As a result, in Australia, the Liberals have found they don’t so much have a party-run media, as they have a media-run party.
News has got a few benefits out of that relationship with the Liberals — a reliable ally in its fight to constrain the ABC, or a nice little $30 million for Foxtel.
This need to pivot is the context required to understand News’ recent management reshuffle — to bring more journalism and less outrage. It explains that journalism still lies deep in News Corp DNA. To broaden market reach, it will need to work harder. It will need to appeal to that emerging progressive suburban demographic.
This time, repackaging the outrage with a one-off pre-election editorial endorsement of Labor is unlikely to help.
sooner or later the dumbed down shareholders of news ltd.are going to realise that supporting only the mad political right of the readership means 75% of the population does not buy your newspapers or watch your T.V programs and news is forced to give away their papers for free at McDonalds and railway stations,this means that shareholders are subsidising Murdochs political power base and now the the advertisers are slowly coming around to understanding this and judging by the stories about the proposed axing of Allan Jones it looks like radio 2GB has worked that out as well, with Murdoch, Jones and Howard all in gods waiting room waiting for Satan to send their lift up will probably be the beginning of change in the mass media make up.
…… Those shareholders are subsiding Rupert’s hobby.
Everyone knows that WA is Australia’s Texas, whereas Queensland is clearly Florida. NSW is New York, Tasmania is probably now Hawaii rather than West Virginia. SA is obviously Oklahoma!
NSW is Las Vegas Nevada and not New York. Have a look at Star City and Barangaroo, plus the masses of poker machines spread across the state. Victoria is more like New York.
I have a dream ie: that Rupert Murdoch invites Bill Shorten to lunch early in the new year. And that Shorten declines. That would be a man worth voting for.
I think that would get my vote too.
Won’t happen, he’ll pay court to Rupert in hope of being anointed the chosen one… then get the chop next election cycle.
Ng GJB you under estimate shortens smarts, he`s much too intelligent to fall for that , he knows that Murdoch and news limited power is on the wane and as a union is advocate used to dealing with the big end of town and is not easily intimidated, just have a little faith, his stint as opposition leader has been impeccable and he`s already seen Abbott and Turnbull off and I have no doubt Scomo and Dutton are next.
That would be the only thing he could do that would make me consider him as anything other than a waste of space sellout & class traitor.
Wouldn’t, couldn’t happen – he’d crawl over broken glass to kiss the mudorc’s Ring.
ah how sad, the conservative hard core voter base is watching the end of the coalition unfolding before their eyes and the best they can come up with is personal insults aimed at shorten, they just dont understand that its not Shorten flogging them, they are doing it themselves, morrison tried that and it didn`t work, still I suppose desperation makes for desperate acts, I`m running an election sweep, 1st prize is a weeks holiday in may to canberra, 2nd prize is 2 weeks, just pick a number between 20 and 30 for seats lost by the coalition, closest wins, and over 30 and you get a bonus prize as well.
AR, your desperation is showing, its over, the libs are finished, the nats are finished and we may even have the pleasure of seeing some of them in jail if labor sets up a federal ICAC, so I suggest you give yourself some distance from them as shit splatters far when it hits the fan.
This is all true, but it is more than that. People consume journalism differently nowadays. Sometimes we just follow the source directly ourselves and have a conversation about it. For the first time in about 250 years the audience need not be just passive consumers.
Why do we need an intermediary to explain the meaning of what somebody says? And with this lot, not a lot of analysis is usually required anyways.
‘While Victoria may be brushed off as “the Massachusetts of Australia” (that is, it almost always goes left), the model has similarly failed to influence in successive elections in Australia’s Texas — Queensland.’ As a born Australian who, like most Australians, has never set foot on US soil and probably never will, I don’t understand at all how an Australian state that contains a quarter of the country’s population can be likened to a tiny sliver of the US that has about 2% of that country’s population. And is Queensland anything like Texas? I only know Texas by reputation whereas I’ve driven from end to end of beautiful, friendly Queensland. Yes they have some nutcase politicians in Queensland but that might be partly because they don’t take the pollies too seriously. I don’t think you can help Australians to understand other Australian states by likening them to states in another country about which most of us really don’t know very much.
I moved from Melbourne to Brisbane eleven years ago, and can confirm that Queensland is the Texas of Aussie politics… people are very laid back, old fashioned, and backwards up here. Political ‘scandals’ anywhere else in Australia seem to just drift away into dust up here. I find it very frustrating!!