Gazette Information is a mysterious new Australian media startup led by Anna Saulwick, a former Change.org and Unicef government and GetUp marketing campaign supervisor.
Saulwick, who lists her title on LinkedIn as CEO of Gazette Information as of June 2024, has introduced on board former Vice head of editorial Brad Esposito as the corporate’s editorial director. Saulwick informed Crikey that the startup is “aiming to supply high-quality free native information”, specializing in each regional and metropolitan areas “the place disinformation is being focused”.
Saulwick additionally mentioned that the corporate, which can look to have numerous sub-mastheads in regional areas, can be “recruiting native reporting expertise”, funded by a “group of philanthropists and impression buyers who care about the way forward for information”.
Nonetheless, Saulwick declined to reply Crikey’s questions on who these mysterious do-gooding buyers had been, or how a lot they’d invested.
“That is within the very earliest phases, and preparations aren’t full, so I’m not ready to share something on this but,” she mentioned.
Likewise, the place precisely the corporate’s new regional mastheads may be primarily based, and the way the corporate is selecting its areas, can also be in query. Requested what precisely she meant by “the place disinformation is being focused” and whether or not there have been areas that Gazette Information noticed as regional priorities of specific significance, Saulwick mentioned there are “a couple of components that make a spot ripe for misinformation … we’re significantly all for communities the place native information has shut down and the place there are fiery native debates underway”.
Esposito informed Crikey he was excited for the brand new publication to “meet folks the place they’re — within the codecs and on the channels they’re most acquainted with”. When pressed as as to if this meant an try at a print product, Saulwick confirmed that “in some areas the viewers will favor print, in order that’s the place we’ll be”.
An ASIC search revealed Gazette Information is registered to an deal with in North Sydney.
There isn’t any scarcity of regional areas in need of native information, and much more in want of print — Australian Neighborhood Media, writer of The Canberra Occasions, Newcastle Herald and Illawarra Mercury, lately shut down the Blayney Chronicle and Oberon Assessment in central west New South Wales, along with lowering circulation for mastheads in Orange, Dubbo, Bathurst and Mudgee.
In 2020, Information Corp introduced greater than 100 of its native and regional titles would both lose their print editions or disappear completely, with redundancies affecting a number of hundred employees. A lot of Information Corp’s previously thriving regional titles have been lowered to retailers staffed by sole digital journalists that focus totally on courtroom, crime and native council, supplanted by employees in capital cities working utterly remotely.
