What Next for ABC News?

At his March 2017 Melbourne Press Club address ABC Director of News Gaven Morris ran through the evolution of ABC Online since its launch in 1995, and outlined management’s vision for Aunty’s digital future.


ABC News director Gaven Morris has strongly defended the organisation’s decision to grow audiences on the back of digital news and current affairs content.

“If you’ve got a taxpayer funded service to provide trusted news and information, our task has got to be to at least try our very hardest to be as relevant as we possibly can to the broadest cross-section of the community,” Morris told a Melbourne Press Club lunch in late March.

“That doesn’t mean that everything we do must be relvant to every single person … but we have got to be trying our hardest to show every Australian value for every dollar they’ve invested in us,” he said.

The ABC’s Investing in Audiences strategy, announced by Managing Director Michelle Guthrie early in March, will see the national broadcaster increase its emphasis on quality content creation, including by regional services, as part of a sweeping restructure of its operations.

Morris said he saw the future of ABC news as providing “an equal digital life” to its quality content, which was previously only designed to reach broadcast audiences.

“A big story told well with a trusted brand can reach bigger audiences than we ever imagined when we [only] had radio and television,” he said.

While platforms and channels will continue to change and the national broadcaster will need to evolve with them, if it sticks to good journalism and good media production, the ABC will be “as relevant as ever into the future,”Morris believes.


Photos from the lunch event


 

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