From the same team that brought you the honest, balanced, quality journalism found in publications like 'The Sun' & 'News Of The World' (See below), comes the launch of more than a dozen new 'Digital-only Hyperlocal Regional Mastheads' & Port Macquarie is getting one of them  - Woopy Doo !

Like the offering from Australian Community Media (ACM) 'Port Macquarie News' Rupert's' 'Hyperlocal Regional Masthead' website will be subscription based, offering some local news padded out with filler stories sourced from other News Corp papers.

Thank God you can get the best news in the Hastings for FREE at PortMac.News !

The move comes after News Corp turned more than 100 print mastheads into online publications and merged 13 newspapers with other titles, cutting hundreds of jobs in the process.

John McGourty, News Corp's national community masthead network editor, said the company had identified 50 potential new digital titles it could open over the next two to three years.

News Corp plans to launch the first 15 of those titles by the end of September.

"The idea is to have a local journalist, living and working in the community that they serve, embedded at a grassroots level covering traditional local journalism such as local council, local law and order, local health, local schools," Mr McGourty said.

Sounds just like what we & Port Macquarie News are already doing - kind of makes you wonder why they are bothering doesn't it ?

New outlets across three states

The 15 new titles will be based in Albury-Wodonga, Ballarat, Bendigo, Gippsland, Latrobe Valley, inner-city Melbourne, Mildura, Shepparton, Dubbo, Hawkesbury, Port Macquarie (Lucky Us !), Orange and Tamworth, as well as the Clare Valley and Port Lincoln, in South Australia.

In May, News Corp Australia's executive chairman Michael Miller said the news habits of regional Australians were 'Moving online' and that the industry was 'passing a tipping point of the impact of migration of digital advertising from print'.

The print publication of almost a dozen News Corp papers in major centres on the eastern seaboard stopped last month, along with regional weekly and bi-weekly papers in Queensland, NSW and the Northern Territory.

That decision was criticised for the effect it would have on older Australians - like Rupert !

"As we've seen in the past few months, the value of trusted news is in the news, not in the paper that it's published on," Mr McGourty said.

He said subscriptions from the new "hyperlocal" mastheads "will make our consumer revenue sustainable today, tomorrow and into the future."

Bleed'm dry Rupert !! Good to know that what really matters is the money !!

Below | Rupert always goes for quality !