The death of New Matilda is bad news for everyone
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Today Australian online news and commentary site New Matilda announced it’s calling it quits. Why? It simply ran out of dough. Some immediately speculated that Crikey would be salivating over the news. After all, New Matilda is practically the only other independent major news and commentary site coming out of Australia. We’re not. New Matilda’s editorial today offers a glimpse into how furiously an online media publication has to paddle to keep its head above water, not to mention consistently produce a high-calibre product, “…ironically, it’s at the time of newmatilda.com’s greatest success that we are making this sad announcement…”: “The big media players are struggling to find a workable online business model that allows them to pay their writers and maintain high standards — and so are we. Since we already run a very lean operation, cutting costs is not an option and we are taking the only path available to us at this time.” Any half decent independent venture has to have a team of people who work their guts out and do it better than their bigger competitors in order to carve out a piece of online territory. It clearly wasn’t a lack of energy, agility or motivation that led to New Matilda calling it quits. Crikey reader Jane Shaw put it best with a comment on our website this morning: Every time something that provides thought provoking commentary and forum for sensible discussion dies, our intellectual world gets a bit smaller. Have a look at any commercial “news” outlet and you’ll know why this is NOT a good thing. Vale NM, you will be missed. |
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7 Comments
Vale New Matilda.
Et tu Crikey? I hope not.
The ABC was once independent too, but lately looks and sounds like a franchise of News Ltd.
Yet more loss of media diversity.
Sad news. Andrew Landeryou will be claiming on Vexnews that this now leaves his news site as the only real Australian competitor to Crikey! He may already have done so, as I’ve yet to read Vexnews today. A claim is being made on another news site, Slanderyou New, that ASIO and the CIA regard Vexnews as their Australian news site of choice. What about Crikey?
#It clearly wasn’t a lack of energy#
Yes
It’s sad to see New Matilda go but I believe that, due to the low entry barriers for new media, there will be many more that pop up to take its place.
I’m running a fledgling online media site myself - http://www.dailybludge.com.au
Right now our contributor numbers are small, but we’ve slowly gaining readership and writers. We’re also completely non-commercial at present, but may explore some sort of funding model in the future if the readership numbers permit.
Either way, thank you Crikey for being one of the best independent media voices that Australia has today!
José Borghino: “Since the start of this year, NewMatilda.com has been repositioning itself as an independent news and analysis site. We have been posting more stories daily, we recently set up the extremely successful PollieGraph blog, and we will be launching a new version of the website in the new year. And, as of today, we take another step towards our aim of remaining a strong and popular alternative to big media in Australia”!
“Previously, the focus of NewMatilda.com was as a newsletter, but we have steadily been making more of our content freely available, and from today all content will be available free of charge - NewMatilda.com readers will no longer need to subscribe. We are contacting all current subscribers individually about how this change will affect your relationship with us, but the most immediate effect will be that you will automatically become NewMatilda.com ‘registered users’. This means that you will continue to receive regular updates from NewMatilda.com and you will not be charged for this service or asked to renew in the future”!
“This shift from a subscriber model to an advertising model reflects global trends and we believe it to be inevitable, given the present configuration of the internet. We will do everything in our power to make the transition as seamless and smooth as possible for all our readers and supporters. This calendar year, we have already published over 400 articles - a quarter of them from new writers - and we’re proud of the fact that we continue to punch far above our ‘weight’. We are also sure that you will be impressed by the look and functionality of the new website to be unveiled in early 2008”.
“Thank you for your tremendous support for and involvement with NewMatilda.com over the past few years. We hope you will remain a part of the evolving NewMatilda.com community, and we’ll keep you updated on the progress of our new website” [José Borghino, NM Editor, Nov 8th 2007].
• “I’m sure readers will be as excited as we are by the new look of the site and especially its new features and functionality”, accentuated José Borghino within the released farewell on Dec 8th 2007, as he headed for Europe. Sadly, the avant-garde website display of NewMatilda gave away to the murky uninspiring substitute early in the following year. Yet nothing prepared me to shed light on Jose’s remark: “behind the scenes, over the past six months, we’ve been busy building a new website from scratch”!
Indeed most incredibly, even archives became inaccessible, while the jerky spectacle was most disheartening. Bad enough for me to ditch NM, especially as my password wasn’t honoured anymore. Neither would I be bother to reregister, conditional to read the comments at the time . Bye bye to the Bill of Rights campaign which faded away irrecoverably in spite of Jose’s emphasis that: “Centre for Policy Development and the Human Rights Act also has its own volunteer staff and infrastructure (a brand new lease on life with the accession of a Labor Government)”!