New media comes to Queensland

First there was the launch of mX in Brisbane on 5 March. Only two days later, Fairfax launched brisbanetimes.com.au, an online newspaper designed to give Queenslanders “a new perspective.” With a team of 15 editorial staff, brisbanetimes.com.au will be a 24/7 news source, covering news, entertainment and sport continuously.

Queensland has traditionally been a state dominated by News Limited media – most notably The Courier Mail. David Fagon, Courier editor, was quoted as describing Fairfax’s venture into the online world as “Fairfax lite.” The Courier Mail are now looking at increasing the marketing of its accompanying website to prevent eager news readers from developing a wandering eye.

But there is nothing “lite” about brisbanetimes.com.au, according to Bruce Wolpe, director of corporate affairs for Fairfax Media, who defends the move into the online environment.

“Online is a dynamic medium that reached exactly the audience we want to reach – professionals and people between 20-50-years-old who are intensive net users and people hungry for an alternative voice for local news and information,” he said.

When creating brisbanetimes.com.au, Fairfax held several focus groups to determine what readers want and this – Wolpe says – was always destined to be an online news source. “Launching a newspaper in a market with such a dominate incumbent would have been a suicide mission,” he said. “You could never recover your investment, much less make a profit.”

Claims that Fairfax had originally planned a print newspaper for Queensland are false, Wolpe says. “We were never going to do it that way,” he said. “Media speculation was way off base and totally informed.”

Fairfax chose the state of Queensland for its new media outlet because it is a “dyamic market with high growth and population”, Wolpe said.

“It’s a community that is intensely interested in news and entertainment,” he said. “It’s absolutely the right territory for a new internet publishing venture.”