News Corp set to launch more than 50 digital-only titles in Australia

After ceasing publication of more than 100 regional and community titles and moving them to digital-only, News Corp is now planning on launching more than 50 new digital-only regional titles across Australia.

The first 15 titles are expected to launch in September while the rest will debut across a three-year plan.

News editor for the company’s national community network, Jessica Clement tweeted that she was hiring for 15 reporters to staff the first 15 mastheads. Three journalists have already been hired.

These mastheads will be based in Albury-Wodonga, Ballarat, Bendigo, Gippsland, Latrobe Valley, inner-city Melbourne, Mildura, Shepparton, Dubbo, Hawkesbury, Port Macquarie, Orange and Tamworth, and South Australia’s Clare Valley and Port Lincoln.

The editor of the national community masthead network, John McGourty, added that the new titles will be “hyperlocal.”

“It really is just grassroots journalism, the ways its always been and our audiences connecting with that in better and bigger ways than ever before,” he added. It‘s important to us that those journalists are embedded in their community, that they are living and working in the communities that they’re serving so that they are true hyperlocal journalists.”

While the new titles are said to serve regional communities, one masthead in the first batch of 15 will be targeted at inner-Melbourne readers.