Barnaby Joyce hopes $10 million journalist fund can help regional newsrooms, grow local talent

The package includes a $10 million journalist fund that will be used by selected newsrooms to hire and train cadets over a two-year period.

Mr Joyce said it was crucial regional media was protected and supported by the government, with other revenue streams often leaving the outlets shortchanged.

"They were hit massively [during the pandemic], and the more we have advertising revenue going to Facebook, Twitter, TikTok and others, that's money that would've paid for a journalist in Armidale, or a journalist in Scone or a journalist in Tamworth," he said.

"And we've got to be aware of that because Facebook is never going to have an office in Tamworth, you can be certain of that."

He said it was silly for anyone to rely solely on national media, which doesn't often cover the issues that are important to locals.

Topics such as council must be covered thoroughly in order to have a true democracy, he said, and the way things are looked at differ depending where you live.

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"It's incredibly important people hear the message from their own area, and the message from their own area might be vastly different to the message from the centre of Sydney, or centre of Brisbane," he said.

"A classic one in our area is the importance of things such as the Dungowan Dam, in other areas they'd probably say 'we don't' want dams, dams are evil', but in our area we know dams underpin the economy of Tamworth."

Like the majority of other industries in regional Australia, it has been difficult to lure journalists from metropolitan areas in recent years, he admitted.

But he hopes the funding will help solve that issue, and maybe even encourage some people originally from regional areas to return, which he believes is the best practice as they already understand the environment.

"Most of the time you've got to grow your own, and your second best choice is a journalist from another regional market," he said.

"It's hard to culturally change a journalist from an inner-suburban area into a regional area, because they come naturally with their inner-urban ideals to a regional area, and sometimes they're vastly different."

Funding may be used for remuneration, travel costs and training. The program will require cadet journalists to be based in the local community for the duration of the program. Part of the funding will also go towards upskilling current journalists.

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