General News
28 September, 2026
Opinion: Where Have All the Journalists Gone?
It's World News Day on September 28, 2026 – a day to celebrate journalism, and the fact-based, verified information it produces.
It's World News Day on September 28, 2026 is a good day to remind ourselves why that matters.
Because whether it's a real-world conversation around the water cooler at work, or an answer being generated by AI, we need to be feeding the system – both human and robot – accurate, verified information. Get that wrong and the consequences can be catastrophic.
Truth matters – especially when the truth is less sexy than a more compelling story, told entertainingly by an advocate or influencer that gets more clicks on social media.
And that's the problem. We are producing more information and "news" than ever before, while having fewer journalists doing the work of checking it, challenging it and finding out whether it's actually true.
So where have all the journalists gone?
In regional Australia, if you're looking for some of the best-paid journalists in town – often the former editors or longest-serving scribes at the local paper – you'll increasingly find them writing marketing and "news" for the local council.
Yes, the same government they once held to account now has some of the best journalistic talent producing its PR. We can't blame the journalists. They get paid more to do less.
But it is worth asking - why has local government decided it needs to get into the news business? Most people don't want their council to be a news organisation. They want it to do its job. Roads, rates and rubbish. Planning. Parks. Libraries. Local services. The things councils are actually there to do.
We didn't ask our council to establish a newsroom. And yet that's increasingly what is happening.
Councils are building their own channels to "inform" residents – websites, newsletters, videos, social media and publications that look increasingly like news services.
But here's the problem. A government communications operation exists to tell people what the government is doing. A newsroom exists to ask whether what the government is doing is any good.
They're not the same thing. One communicates. The other scrutinises.
And when councils start filling the local information space with their own version of "news", they're not just communicating with their communities. They're competing with the independent newsrooms that are supposed to hold them to account.
We shouldn't kid ourselves that this is just a harmless shift in the way councils communicate. When government starts producing the news, it changes the information ecosystem.
"News" is already a much-abused term. Government and corporate PR departments produce "news". Online advocates and influencers produce "news". Marketing is dressed up as information. Opinion is dressed up as fact. Social media platforms are just as happy to host dangerous lies as they are the truth. They profit the same either way.
There's an old maxim in journalism that news is what somebody doesn't want printed – the rest is PR. A great local news service does much more than that, of course. It builds connection, tells the stories of communities, celebrates local achievement and helps people understand the place they live. But it must also do that first thing. It must be prepared to ask the questions somebody doesn't want asked.
Because democracy depends on scrutiny. The spotlight test that shines a light on what people in positions of power are doing and let the public decide what they think.
And right now, we're at risk of an entire level of government in this country – local government – going increasingly unscrutinised while it builds its own channels to tell residents its side of the story.
That's why this matters beyond our own newsrooms.
This year, more than 1000 news organisations across more than 100 countries are marking World News Day together – a global campaign asking the public to know the facts, understand what matters and choose trusted journalism, because it's their right to know.
It's also a chance for all of us to think about the information diet we're consuming.
Stop scrolling. Question the things that simply confirm what you already believe. Be suspicious of certainty without evidence. And remember that not everything that looks like news is journalism.
This World News Day, let's celebrate local news services and the journalists who work across regional Australia. They are essential infrastructure for our democratic way of life. They are the people who help make sure the information we consume – in our communities, in our conversations and increasingly in our AI machines – is based on something more solid than whoever shouted the loudest or got the most clicks.
