This report is based on a survey of 2,038 regional news consumers. The aim of the study is to identify gaps in local news provision in regional parts of Australia and whether there is an appetite for new grassroots news offerings.

There have been government and industry programmes developed to assist regional journalism, but the voices of practitioners are often missing from the debate. The central aim of this study is to find out what regional journalists need to keep serving their communities and how they see the future.

The Digital News Report provides an annual snapshot of how Australians are consuming news in a digital media landscape. Now in its sixth year, the study provides in-depth analysis of news consumption and performance over time.

This report shows that Australian news consumers think the news media are doing a good job helping them to understand events and keeping them up to date. On the negative side, the number of Australians with high interest in news has fallen, news avoidance has risen, and many Australians think the news is often too...

In Australia, we see a rapid rate of change towards digital and mobile news. For the first time, Australians’ use of online news has surpassed traditional offline news sources. Interestingly, the majority of Australians still see television news services as the most trusted source of news.