Australian Community Media's (ACM) 14 daily newspapers have lended their trusted voice to calls from the Prime Minister, state premiers and health authorities for every Australian to join the fight against coronavirus by following official advice to just stay home.
The front pages of The Canberra Times and key regional mastheads including the Newcastle Herald, Illawarra Mercury, The Border Mail, The Courier in Victoria and The Examiner in Tasmania feature a message to highlight the critical role that every individual plays in the nation’s efforts to slow the spread of COVID-19 infections.
Under the headline “In your hands” and a symbolic depiction of Australia, the newspapers implore their readers to follow the official advice to stay home, practise social distancing and observe proper hand hygiene.
The message will also appear over the coming week in social media feeds and on the front pages of ACM’s other 150 local newspapers.
ACM chief executive officer Allen Williams says ACM’s local news sites and newspapers were connecting communities around the country to information they could trust and also had a role to play to help keep readers and their families safe.
“By following the official health advice every individual Australian can be doing their bit to help slow the spread of COVID-19, which in turn helps our frontline medical staff and ultimately saves lives,” Williams says.
The community safety message is one of a number of initiatives ACM has rolled out to support staff, audiences, advertisers and communities through the growing health and economic emergency caused by the coronavirus.
ACM is also assisting advertisers.
“We know that in a crisis, messages from our advertisers need to be delivered at short notice, so we are providing extra flexibility with booking and material deadlines to make it easier for them to reach our 7.7 million readers," ACM chief revenue officer Tony Kendall says.
These changes include extended deadlines, design resources and making "every effort" to accommodate short notice bookings.
Essential rolling coverage of COVID-19 developments relating to public health and safety is also being made free for anyone to access across ACM news sites.
As a result, ACM's sessions are up by 153% to over 15 million sessions for the last seven days with users up by 114% to over 5.4 million for the week.
When comparing to the previous week the numbers are also significant, with 56% growth in sessions and 37% growth in users week-on-week.
To support local businesses trying to communicate with customers and help readers stay across changing trading hours and restrictions, ACM has launched a free Open for Business portal across all websites.
The portal allows businesses to nominate whether they're still open and how customers can interact with them - via takeaways, deliveries or remote service.
There has been more than 2600 listings received across 70 mastheads in the first three days.
The listings, updated daily, are now appearing online and in print.
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