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By ERWIN CHLANDA
Tomorrow the Tennant & District Times will publish its last printed edition and go exclusively online, in its 46th year of circulation.
“The future of newspapers is digital and here in Tennant Creek we’re moving with the times,” says owner and editor Natasha Hennig.
“For several years now, our online readership has been climbing steadily.”
This follows the moving exclusively online six years ago by the Alice Springs News, now in its 27th year of publication, and the closure of the Centralian Advocate.
This heralds a Murdoch-free zone for Central Australia with the Advocate relegated to a minor appendage to the Darwin based NT News.
Ms Hennig says the announcement about the Times “comes with sorrow as generations of locals have grown up reading the Tennant Times.
“We know there’ll be backlash and we will just have to cop it. If it’s any consolation, we will miss the smell of newsprint on Friday mornings too.
“The death of print editions was inevitable. The concept was declared terminal at least eight years ago and the fish-and-chip wrapping has been on life support ever since.
“We’re knocking it on the head now to be kind. We’ll be able to better use the revenue we spend on printing … on improving our online presence.
“And following Facebook’s hissy fit and a subsequent deal with the Australian Government, the social media giant has reversed its ban on news pages and restored all content.
Locals can once again keep up with the Times on Facebook.”
The Alice Springs News is one of the nation’s first online newspapers, starting in 1995, at first in parallel with its print edition.
The Tennant & District Times and the Alice Springs News are in talks about collaboration.
CORRECTION February 26, 8.20am: Actually, the Alice Springs News moved exclusively online in March 2011 (as I recall), so almost exactly a decade ago. The last print edition was published on March 11, 2011. It first went online in tandem with its print edition in 1997. We thank historian and frequent contributor Alex Nelson for this advice. ED.
The Tennant Times was originally produced by the Apex Club of Tennant Creek.
It was a huge task the Club took on and required many members to sit and write the articles for the paper on a Monday evening.
The copy was then sent to Alice Springs to be printed by Asprint who then returned the finished paper on Friday morning.
This required a lot on ingenuity to be able to write the paper on Monday which was still news and readable on Friday.
The paper won the first Apex National Service Award in 1975. The Club members involved in the production of the paper are long gone but it is gratifying to know it is still being circulated. Apex was able to become more involved in the social aspect of the town whereby some infrastructure was improved, sporting bodies developed and citizens generally became more informed on the day to day events of the town.
Okay, what if you don’t do facebook for personal reasons or perhaps just stay ignorant about what happens in the town?