This report examines how Norway, Denmark, Sweden and Finland have been able to cultivate a diverse media landscape, and how the lessons learned from doing so could inform the Albanese Government’s strategy on reforming Australia’s media.

The Centre for Media Transition’s regional news project started in late November 2017 and since then, the state of regional news media has become a more pressing issue.

There’s a good reason why the ACCC didn’t block the Fairfax–Nine merger, and it tells us why government policy needs to change.

Regional and local media - always exposed to the vagaries of direct and indirect economic activity, population drift to larger centres and the cost/supply challenges in transport and infrastructure associated with remoteness and modest market size - is experiencing digital disruption on a greater and more sustained scale in proportion to ‘mainstream’ city-based media.

Against expectations, Fairfax, Nine and the government are running up against the regulator.