(Image: Private Media/Zennie)
(Image: Private Media/Zennie)

Dear Crikey readers,

By now you will know that Mark Zuckerberg’s Meta, the owner of Facebook and Instagram, will stop paying publishers for news and shut down its news tab in Australia next month. Facebook (and Google) signed multimillion-dollar deals with publishers in 2021 to dodge negotiating for content under Australia’s news media bargaining code.

Now, as expected, the tech giant is backing out. The code was fundamentally and functionally clumsy, but this change is another blow for publishers big (like Nine and Guardian Australia) and small (like Crikey) that funded journalism with Meta’s cash. 

There’s a fair bit of self-interest and conflict of interest being served up by the media over the role of tech giants in funding journalism. Ditto Meta’s justification for getting out: it has said that the number of people using its Facebook News feature has collapsed by 80% in the past year. But if Facebook users are consuming less news, it’s because Facebook is showing them less of it. At Crikey we’ve seen the impact of this as the engagement rate from our own audience has weakened over the past few years despite increased traffic to the actual articles. We don’t want to have to rely on big tech companies to reach you, our readers. 

Why should you care about any of this? The bottom line is that the Meta news presents yet another challenge for anyone committed to producing genuine public interest journalism. We might have recently survived a legal battle with a billionaire, but we’re still facing the same challenges as everyone else. A sluggish advertising market, the threat of artificial intelligence, and an audience facing a cost of living crisis and exhausted by a relentlessly confronting news cycle.

Just late last year Private Media went through a restructure that involved several redundancies, including on Crikey’s team. 

And unlike the mainstream media, we don’t have a safety net. We can’t rely on profits from a streaming platform or a real estate advertising arm to subsidise our journalism. We’re not prepared to compromise our integrity with clickbait and of course, we don’t have (and frankly don’t want) access to the wallets of mining magnates. Our independence comes at a cost — we rely on subscribers to fund our journalism. We’re not a breaking news outlet racing to compete with the news wires or rolling broadcasts to get you live updates. We’re here to add more context — to inform, challenge and surprise readers with a curated mix of news, analysis and opinion that maps out how power works and pushes the conversation forward.

But the thing that truly sets us apart, and always has over two decades? Our readers. 

Here’s what we know about you. We know that you value our independence and our refusal to compromise it for cash. We will never be funded by media moguls, fossil fuels or gambling ads. 

We know you’re unique — a community of heavily invested subscribers who believe passionately in supporting independent media. You’re often very vocal, and will always tell us when you’re pissed off (equally you quite like to be irritated by us, at least some of the time). We know you trust us to challenge you, you can’t stand spin, and won’t tolerate excuses. 

We know you support independent media for different reasons — some of you respect that we aren’t funded by corporate interests, some of you are sick of the spin from News Corp and Nine, and some of you enjoy being part of an active community of readers. 

Here’s what we don’t know: why are you paying for us? What keeps you committed? What can we do more of? Tell us in the comments and letters@crikey.com.au about why you put your money where your mouth is and support independent media. 

And for those of you who aren’t subscribers, we have a special discount: save $110 on a yearly subscription, available for a limited time.

Yours,

Sophie Black (editor-in-chief), Gina Rushton (editor) and Jack Callil (deputy editor)