A photo showing attendees of the 2023 Adelaide Fringe Festival.
The 2023 Adelaide Fringe Festival (Image: AAP/Andre Castellucci)

A week or so into this year’s Adelaide Fringe Festival, performers and organisers noted a rather large lacuna. The Advertiser, South Australia’s only daily newspaper, appeared to be boycotting the event.

At least this was claimed in an open letter penned by critic Samela Harris on behalf of the Adelaide Critics Circle. Only, ‘Tiser readers wouldn’t be privy to that point of view, given the paper declined to publish it.

It wasn’t always like this — the newspaper, as you would expect of any city paper worth its salt, has long provided extensive coverage of Fringe. Suddenly this year, local art critics told Guardian Australia that an editor at The Advertiser contacted them individually and said “it’s all off; you’re not reviewing anything this year”.

We are happy to say this so-called boycott has lifted; the paper has run an interview with 20-year Fringe veteran Akmal Saleh… announcing that he would never work with the festival again after “noise and music bleeding from an adjacent tent venue ruined his show” and his complaints apparently went unheeded.

It’s one of 11 pieces about this year’s festival on the ‘Tiser website since the start of February, among which the number of stories concerning a “putrid” toilet situation equal anything that could be called a review.

The possibility that this sudden drop in reviews (subsequently replaced with mostly negative news coverage) had anything at all to do with the fact that the festival chose not to purchase advertising in the paper, as it had in previous seasons, was roundly rejected by the paper.

“The Advertiser is covering the Fringe Festival on its merits, focusing on the aspects that resonate most with our audience,” a spokesperson said at the time. “Any claim our coverage is influenced by commercial considerations is 100% false.”

But an editorial in the days that followed the initial complaints made it clear it wasn’t just merit that had gone into the decision.

Editor Gemma Jones said the Fringe launched a “rival” review website with “an almost identical format and functionality as our ‘Tiser Fringe Adviser”, a decision she said undermined “our ability to find an audience” for similar content.

“The Fringe walked away from The Advertiser,” she insisted, “not the other way around”.

Anyway, we at Crikey have since been fascinated to see what meets the ‘Tiser’s stated merit criteria of festival aspects that “resonate most with our audience”.