ROY BUTLER
Independent Member for Barwon
Welcome back! It was a mercifully short gap between editions, but enough time to really drive home how central the Courier and the Wee Waa News are to their communities.
I congratulate the Times News Group for recognising the inherent value of this publishing institution, which has been printing newspapers for more than 110 years.
The Times News Group has a track record of rescuing regional newspapers, and I look forward to our communities benefiting from their expertise.
The Courier and the Wee Waa News are hubs for local people to find out what’s going on and what their neighbours and acquaintances are up to. They are able to take a whole-of-community approach, which can’t be replaced by social media.
By faithfully recording local events along with the joys and the challenges of living locally, they make tangible what it means to belong to our communities.
Beyond this important social role, local newspapers are also an important pillar of our democracy.
With their access to local, state, and federal politicians, journalists are in a unique position to ask questions about issues that matter locally.
Balanced and fearless reporting can help local people hold their elected representatives to account, so that our communities thrive rather than stagnate.
These are challenging times for local media, forced to compete in an increasingly digital world against the mercenary algorithms of multinational companies with little sense of social responsibility.
However, the success of local titles in other areas shows what is possible.
Now it’s up to us to show how much we value having these platforms for local voices.
Our communities would
have been lessened by their absence.

To order photos from this page click here