The Drum online is an opinion and news analysis website that publishes regular contributions from inside and outside the ABC, including from ABC journalists Barrie Cassidy, Ian Verrender and Annabel Crabb.
The staff on the website, which pays freelance writers for contributions, were told the site would close this week.
The Drum has been repeatedly targeted by News Corp Australia and other publishers, including Crikey, as taxpayer-funded competition to commercial media.
In 2010 Crikey publisher Eric Beecher said the Drum sat “blatantly in the territory of sites like Crikey”.
“Operating in the commercial space, we expect vigorous competition from other commercial publishers,” Beecher said. “But to see the ABC tanks roll up on our lawn was bewildering”…
The axing of the Drum masthead will not save a huge amount as it had only two staff and didn’t pay its outside contributors handsomely. However, Guthrie is keen to streamline the ABC’s online analysis and focus more on news analysis and less on outside opinion.
What a shame. The Drum is one the best sources for expert commentary on a broad-range of issues, and certainly beats hand-down many of the commercial operators.
Sadly, The ABC is fast turning into just another news aggregator site, rather than one that provides detailed commentary and analysis. The ABC also happens to be highly trusted among the community, ranking well above its commercial peers (see below Newspoll survey from 2014). No doubt that is why Commercial competitors have bleated so loudly: their content doesn’t stack-up by comparison.
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Question: How much trust do you have in what you read or hear in the following media?
Leith van Onselen is Chief Economist at the MB Fund and MB Super. He is also a co-founder of MacroBusiness.
Leith has previously worked at the Australian Treasury, Victorian Treasury and Goldman Sachs.
