Project explores if there is life after redundancy

Members of the Wollongong community attending a rally about cuts to editorial staff at the Illawarra Mercury in May this year.

A landmark study is tracking what happens to journalists after they are made redundant. By Lawrie Zion

Before this year, the overwhelming majority of the more than 2000 journalism redundancies in Australia that have taken place since the start of 2012 were in the capital cities.

But over the last 12 months, regional centres across the country have experienced a serious contraction in journalism jobs.

The Newcastle Herald, Ballarat Courier, Bendigo Advertiser, Border Mail in Albury-Wodonga and Illawarra Mercury are just some of many daily papers that have been affected by these cuts, reducing their journalist staffing levels by as much as 50 %.

Meanwhile broadcasting outlets, including the ABC, have also been shedding jobs in rural Australia.

What does this mean for those who lose their jobs? And what happens to the communities that they have served where there are fewer reporters on the ground?

These are some of the questions being explored as part of a survey being conducted by the New Beats project.

This five-year study, which brings together researchers from four universities in partnership with MEAA, the National Library of Australia, and the ABC, is exploring the aftermath of journalism redundancies for journalists and the news media in Australia. 

The centrepiece of the project is an annual survey we are conducting with journalists  who experienced a journalism redundancy anywhere in Australia between 2012 and 2014. More than 250 participants took part in the first of the annual surveys that we conducted last year. 

Our separate regional survey, which is currently underway, is designed to explore the experiences of journalists, editors, photographers or other media staff who have taken redundancies from regional and rural media, at any time from 2012 to now.

So if you are someone who was working for a news outlet outside of the metro areas and have taken a redundancy since the start of 2012, we’d like to invite you to take our confidential survey, details of which can be found at www.newbeatsblog.com.

The survey will remain open until Christmas Eve.

Further details of the New Beats Project can be found at our About page. And  you can follow the project on Twitter @newbeatproject.

Listen to Lawrie Zion talking about the project on Radio National’s Media Report program.

Lawrie Zion is Associate Professor, Journalism at La Trobe University