alan sunderland

Water, water everywhere … but where are the journos?

To be fair, there was a bigger story happening somewhere else.

When a major water main burst on Sydney’s lower north shore on Saturday morning, the world was still coming to terms with the death of Queen Elizabeth II 24 hours earlier, and there was little room among the wall to wall media coverage for much else.

So when water began flooding across Epping Road, a major artery for the city, the early coverage was mostly confined to radio traffic reports, where it was mentioned as a hazard for motorists. The news caravan quickly left it at that and moved on.

Meanwhile, hundreds of homes and thousands of residents, including shops businesses and schools, were cut off from the water supply indefinitely. No drinking water, nothing to wash in, no way to flush toilets, all with no warning or chance to prepare. Updates from Sydney Water were vague and unhelpful, so the people of Lane Cove and surrounding neighbourhoods turned to their usual source of information – the news media.

For the most part, as the weekend wore on, they were met with silence. The well-documented loss of thousands of journalist jobs in recent years meant there were simply no boots on the ground and no local news teams covering the crisis. Newspapers and radio news simply didn’t have the story on their radar. But there was one exception.

A small, community-based news provider called In the Cove had been on the story from the moment it broke. The publisher’s owner and sole full-time reporter, Jacky Barker, assisted by local contacts and volunteers, had been chasing information from the authorities, police, local politicians and eyewitnesses. Using social media and whatever other means of communication was available, In the Cove provided constant updates across the weekend, operating on lots of coffee and very little sleep.

At times, the outlet had to do more than simply report. With so many locals contacting them, asking questions but also providing information, photos and evidence of the impact on them, In the Cove often had more reliable information than the authorities. More than once, they found themselves providing information on the extent of the crisis to the very people charged with managing it.

Eventually, after three days, mainstream media began to realise the size and importance of the story, and began to cover it as well, many of them using In the Cove as a vital source of information and contacts. By the time local MPs began calling for an independent inquiry into the poor handling of this major infrastructure crisis, no one was in any doubt about what a big story it was.

There is both good news and bad news in this situation, which plays out at different times in different ways across much of regional and suburban Australia.

The good news is that, with so much traditional local media disappearing or under threat in Australia, enterprising and hard-working local news providers are stepping in to fill the gap. They operate on a shoe-string, fuelled by passion and a commitment to their community, and do an impressive job. In an industry in decline, they represent one of the few green shoots. There are dozens and dozens of similar hyperlocal news outlets across the nation.

The bad news, though, is that they get almost no recognition or support. Too small to attract funding and too local to be noticed, they are largely ignored if they are noticed at all. As Jacky Barker, publisher/editor/reporter on In the Cove says. ‘it is devastating when Facebook takes down your page last year like all other media, then agrees to pay money to media under the Media Bargaining Code but only to media that makes $150,000 a year – which I can only dream about’.

Put simply, it is time for governments, online platforms and the wider industry to recognise the vital local reporting done by small, community-based news providers and give them the funding assistance, recognition and support they deserve.

We have too few sources of good local news in this country to let the ones we do have soldier on alone.

Alan Sunderland is the former Editorial Director of the ABC. He is now a board member of LINA, the Local and Independent News Association of which In the Cove is a founding member. He also lives in Lane Cove, and lost his water supply for several hours over the weekend.