Sadly, regional newspapers in the APN News & Media Limited (APN) stable are still in the grip of a cost cutting regimen:
Resilient local trading conditions assisted by a strong real estate pillar helped Australian Regional Media (ARM) to deliver an improved performance.
Revenue was down 8% to $99.0 million, with EBITDA down 17% to $10.5 million.
Consistent with the broader publishing industry, ARM was negatively impacted by the weak agency market, with National revenues down 20%. ARM continues to focus on connecting with its audience and has grown its weekly aggregate audience by 8% to 1.4 million since the beginning of the year.
ARM continues to effectively manage its cost base and delivered year on year cost savings of $6 million in the half.
[HALF YEAR FINANCIAL REPORT AND APPENDIX 4D:APN News & Media Limited and controlled entities for the period ended 30 June 2014]
Rather worryingly, in Queensland APN became involved in furthering the political aims of an increasingly unpopular government of the day, by participating in a skewed 'community consultation' campaign conducted by the Newman Government, the Strong Choices questionnaire.
Rather worryingly, in Queensland APN became involved in furthering the political aims of an increasingly unpopular government of the day, by participating in a skewed 'community consultation' campaign conducted by the Newman Government, the Strong Choices questionnaire.
The Guardian 23 April 2014:
If
you're not interested in raising taxes, reducing services or selling off
assets, then the Queensland government doesn't want to hear from you.
Queensland
treasurer Tim
Nicholls has declared the government's “Strong Choices” campaign a success after
the first week of operation, with more than 16,000 people making submissions
through the Strong Choices
website on how to reduce government debt.
Using
an interactive questionnaire, people can suggest raising taxes, selling or
leasing state assets, and reducing government services to reduce government
debt.
In
a statement
on launching the site, which is part of a $6m campaign, Nicholls said the
aim was to canvass Queenslanders’ views.
“This
unprecedented level of community consultation and communication will enable
every Queenslander who wants to take part to have the opportunity to provide
detailed feedback on exactly what their priorities for the state are and to
make their own choices as to how they would reduce the state’s debt,” he said.
However,
the questionnaire does not allow you to submit your results if you choose not
to raise taxes, cut services or sell off assets. If you complete each page but
don't reduce the debt by the approved amount, you're unable to continue on to
submit your results and the section on prioritising government spending.
Screenshot
of the error message on the Strong Choices site.
This
ensures any responses collated by the Queensland government will only include
those who agree with the premise that the debt must be reduced to between $50bn
and $55bn, skewing the results.....
Not content with manipulating the range of possible choices respondents had, the survey also apparently botched a graph:
The graph
used on the site also emphasises the “unsustainable” range of debt, as it mixes
two different axis increments – the “sustainable” section increases in lots of
$10bn, whereas the unsustainable section increases in lots of $5bn, and has a
greater distance between tick marks.
Brisbane-based
software developer James Ottaway posted this new version of the graph to
Twitter, demonstrating how it would look with a consistent axis:
With The Canberra Times revealing this week that; Operating losses at The Australian widened from $19.3 million to $27.1 million against a budgeted loss of $7.56 million, according to the last weekly internal operating accounts for 2012-13. Revenue tumbled from $135 million to $108 million, versus a budgeted $133 million.
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