With Anthony Albanese’s former spin doctor now facing up for small publishers, advocacy group PIJI is now pushing his government to cough up cash it promised a year ago.

Alex Cramb, who joined the Public Interest Journalism Initiative as chief executive last January, worked for the Australian prime minister as senior press secretary from 2020-22, leaving – according to media reports quoting the PM – to “raise goats in a farm in regional Victoria”.

In PIJI’s November newsletter, he reports a recent briefing at which “it became painfully clear” that the first tranche of the federal government’s News MAP funding package, announced in December 2024, “remains untouched.

“Not a single cent has been spent to support struggling independent media,” he says.

The package, “possibly opening for applications in November (see here and below), offers little hope for small, largely volunteer-run publications.

“These grassroots outlets, which provide essential public interest journalism, are effectively excluded.”

Cramb says policymakers indicated “a second tranche of about $33 million is expected early next year, but the programme – meant to foster ‘innovation’ – is still in limbo.

“This delays vital assistance by at least 18 months, a crippling timeline for small publications already battling shrinking resources and readership. Many will have shuttered by the time the second tranche opens.”

PIJI’s newsletter tells the “survival stories” of two publications, one of them the Prom Coast News in Victoria’s South Gippsland region, where Mohya Davies and Kaye Rodden OAM (pictured top, with supporters) helped keep community news flowing after the 134-year-old Foster Mirror shuttered.

It’s a community that Cramb knows well, reporting on Instagram that large eggs and blueberry jam were on offer at the farm shop in Ameys Track after “the girls” had been particularly productive.

But he says the Prom Coast News, which launched in September last year, is “still in a month-to-month, hand-to-mouth position”. Produced by four paid contractors and “an array of local volunteers”, the News now boasts 300 paid digital subscribers and a distribution range of 1200 newspapers across several regional townships.

Less fortunate was the Orange News Examiner, which as PIJI puts it, “battled the digital ad vacuum – and lost”. Founder Peter Holmes had hoped support would be forthcoming, but says he was, “the worst ad salesperson to have ever walked the earth”.

PIJI’s Sezen Bakan writes that a problem was that many businesses either just used their own social media accounts to promote their businesses, or bought advertising through Facebook, Google and Instagram.

Holmes had experience from Fairfax and News, and was at Buzzfeed when it shut its Australian operation during COVID-19. He launched the Orange News Examiner in January 2022 and says he quickly attracted an audience by learning what locals wanted to read. “There was a real hunger for news about what was happening in their city,” he told Bakan.

But getting them to commit even $20 a week to the local news outlet was hard, especially when “his responsibility as a journalist” brought him into conflict with business owners. “There was plenty of times where you knew you’d really pissed someone off in the local community who was a businessperson, so there was no chance you’d ever get them – and probably every other business owner that they know – as an advertiser,” he said.

Bakan says Holmes wrote to “the likes of Kevin Rudd, Malcolm Turnbull and Judith Neilson” for support, but shortage of time stood in the way of success. Then, with the 2024 death of his brother, and difficulties establishing a paywall, he opted to walk away, and now works for better-funded startup Gazette News.

With the closure of the News Examiner, Orange is “largely serviced” by Australian Community Media’s Central Western Daily. PIJI’s Bakan says that while the print publication “appears to be focused on original local reporting”, the website appears to heavily rely on state, national and international news. 

Before joining Albo, Cramb (pictured from his LinkedIn page) had spent ten years as a partner of GRACosway, advising clients in the defence, infrastructure, transport and professional services sectors on public policy and communications. He was also a media adviser to Kevin Rudd, and communications director for the ALP’s 2007 ‘Kevin07’ federal election campaign. He began his engagement with the media industry as a journalist at Sydney Morning Herald publisher Fairfax Media, where he worked between 1985-88.

• Details on the federal government’s Grant Connect website now show the “Journalism Assistance Fund Grant Opportunity” (FO112025-JAF), describing it as a programme which “aims to support public interest journalism and media diversity in Australia”, adding “The JAF will deliver $67.6 million in grants to eligible Australian-owned news publishers to support existing journalists who produce core news content that is distributed digitally.” Applications “are expected to open in mid-November 2025” when grant opportunity guidelines will also be released. 

Peter Coleman