The Public Interest Publishers Index (PIPI) is an ongoing effort to catalogue Australian news outlets operating in print and digital formats. Data from this Index is made available through two web interfaces and quarterly exports. A summary post on my blog each quarter describes the changes made to the data.

PIPI is limited to outlets that, on my assessment, are Public Interest Publishers, meaning they predominantly cover local news, court and crime news, and/or politics. Further information about the definitions that apply for this project can be found here.

This project does not include broadcast radio and television outlets as these are comprehensively included in the Australian Communications and Media Authority’s Register of Radiocommunications Licenses. Content sampling will be used for the purposes of determining eligibility and accurate data, but monthly geographic sampling is not part of this project.

PIPI launched on 1 April 2025. It was adapted from Creative Commons data collected by the Public Interest Journalism Initiative (PIJI) through its Australian News Data Project, which operated between 2020-2024. PIPI is not affiliated with PIJI.

Business entity data was added to the database with the Q2/25 release in July 2025.

The Journalism Education and Research Association of Australia (JERAA) generously covered the platform costs for 2025.

Access

To access the public News Producers interface, please click here.
To access the public Changes interface, please click here.

For Collaborator access to PIPI, please click here. Collaborator access provides the ability to filter and download data and is available to members of the Journalism Education and Research Association of Australia (JERAA).

Data

Quarterly exports of the data beginning from 31 March 2025 are available on the Publications page.

Disclosure

As an employee of the Local and Independent News Association (LINA), a peak body for digital local newsrooms, I have a conflict of interest when assessing member newsrooms for this project.

To manage this, beginning with the start of my employment in October 2025, substantive changes relating to LINA members are reviewed by Dr Alison McAdam, Lecturer in Communication at Deakin University, before they are implemented.

Substantive changes include any assessment of eligibility for inclusion in the project, as well as any change to the outlet status, primary format, sub format, print frequency, scale, coverage area, change category and change type fields.

Non-substantive changes that aren’t reviewed are changes to the outlet name, record ID, outlet start, outlet end, entity name, entity type, URL, version ID, version start, version end and version status fields.

No confidential information obtained through my employment at LINA is used in this project.

Contact

For any questions about PIPI or the underlying data, or to correct the data, please email me.

This is an unpaid project for me and I may not have the time to collect or prepare data for specific purposes.

Citation

To cite the project as a whole:
Dickson G. 2025. Public Interest Publishers Index. <https://gary-dickson.com/pipi>

To cite an individual record:
Dickson G. 2025. Portland Observer. Public Interest Publishers Index. Record Version 526.01. <https://gary-dickson.com/pipi>.

License

Quarterly export data of the Public Interest Publishers Index by Gary Dickson is licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 4.0.

Definitions

Content fields

Public Interest Publisher

A public interest publisher is a news outlet that primarily distributes its news content in written formats, either digitally or in print. To be included in the index, the outlet should primarily and regularly produce (1) original public interest journalism for (2) a public audience and adhere to (3) identifiable professional or ethical standards.

(1) Original public interest journalism means content that records, reports or investigates issues of public significance for Australians, issues relevant to engaging Australians in public debate and in informing democratic decision making, or content which relates to community and local events.

(2) To be eligible, news content should be published to a public audience, meaning that it is readily available to any person who wishes to access it. This does not preclude a company from charging a fee for access to the content, but it should not otherwise be limited through, for example, requiring a person to be a member of an association or industry body.

(3) Journalism is a process of finding out information, verifying it and applying editorial judgment. It is characterised by professional values including independence and fairness. News outlets must adhere to identifiable professional and ethical standards.

An outlet will satisfy this test if it is subject to the rules of one of the following:

  • The Australian Press Council;
  • The Independent Media Council; or
  • Substantially equivalent editorial standards relating to the provision of quality
    journalism.

An important ethical standard is that news outlets have editorial independence from the subjects of their news coverage. This means that they are not owned or controlled by a political advocacy organisation (such as a political party, lobby group or union); and not owned or controlled by a party that has a commercial interest in the coverage being produced (for example, a publication that covers a sport that is owned or controlled by the sport’s governing body).

This does not include the inherent commercial interests a news company may have in the production of content. It describes where such coverage may give rise to a conflict of interest which disadvantages or misleads the public audience.

Community News Organisations

Some outlets are tagged as Community scale news producers. These outlets have different characteristics to other news producers, but nevertheless can fill an important role in a local news ecosystem.

These outlets tend to be non-commercial and produced by volunteers, sometimes without journalistic training, and covering hyperlocal issues such as events, profiles of individuals in town, and local history. They are often produced by a local civic institution such as community centre or social organisation.

The community scale option is intended to reflect these outlets, which do not provide the depth, consistency or professionalism of local news outlets, but which are important parts of community news provision. I do not apply the requirement to adhere to professional and ethical standards to these outlets, though I do require that they be editorially independent of local government or other interests like chambers of commerce or tourism boards.

Format

Each outlet is coded to one of two Primary Formats and up to 11 Sub Formats, as relevant.

The two Primary Formats are:

  • Print, meaning that the outlet distributes its news content in a physical format, whether a newspaper, magazine or journal. Where an outlet has a print edition of any kind, it is recorded to this category, even if the majority of its content is distributed digitally.
  • Digital, meaning that the outlet distributes its news content in a digital format, whether on a website, on a dedicated app, in an email newsletter, on social media or on another external platform. Where a news outlet has a digital newspaper that is not distributed in print, it is recorded to this category.

Sub Formats are for recording more specific distribution channels. An outlet can be allocated to as many Sub Format categories as required. In alphabetical order, the 11 Sub Formats are:

  • Dedicated App, meaning a web, mobile or other application that is specific to the outlet or its broader network under the same Operating Entity and which allows users to access news content.
  • Digital Print Edition, meaning a digitised edition of a newspaper, magazine or journal. This may be used even where no edition is printed.
  • Livestream, meaning real time digital access to a video or audio feed of news content.
  • Magazine, meaning a print publication that is released at a lower frequency, typically monthly or quarterly, with less time-sensitive news content.
  • Newsletter, meaning a print or digital publication which is typically written for an internal rather than public audience. A newsletter for a news outlet will often summarise the outlet’s articles.
  • Newspaper, meaning a print publication that is released at a higher frequency, typically at least weekly, with time-sensitive news content.
  • Podcast, meaning an audio distribution format for pre-recorded news content.
  • Radio, meaning an audio distribution format for live broadcast news content.
  • Social Media, meaning direct distribution of news content on social media platforms. Ordinary sharing of links that refer audiences back to a website or app is not sufficient for this category.
  • Television, meaning a video distribution format for live broadcast news content.
  • Website, meaning distribution on a website that is specific to the outlet or its broader network under the same Operating Entity.

Print Schedule, meaning how often the title is published in print. This field is only applicable for Print Format outlets with a Newspaper or Magazine Sub Format.

Website, a URL for the news section of the outlet.

Geographic fields

Scale

News outlets provide coverage for geographic areas of different sizes. Each news outlet in PIPI is allocated to a Scale:

  • Community, meaning the outlet primarily covers hyperlocal social issues.
  • Local, meaning the outlet primarily covers a small geographic area, from a single town or local government area up to a sub-state region.
  • Metropolitan, meaning the outlet has a coverage area which includes an entire capital city. News outlets in this category tend to cover news over a large geographic area and provide irregular attention to any single place, unlike Local scale outlets.
  • State/territory, meaning the outlet has a coverage area which includes an entire state or territory. Any local news tends to be reactive or illustrative of a larger issue facing the state or territory.
  • National, meaning the outlet primarily covers news which affects the entire country, such as federal politics or the economy.

State, meaning the state or territory where the outlet primarily operates. Where the outlet is present in multiple states or territories, as can be the case with border titles, the outlet is allocated according to its production location.

LGAs, meaning the local government area(s) that are regularly covered by the outlet. ‘Regularly’ for these purposes means an average of 12 stories per year.

Operational fields

These fields reflect the operational structure of the outlet. Typically, this is the company that owns and operates the outlet. Where an outlet has multiple parent owners, this field captures all of them. Where an outlet’s operating entity itself has a parent entity, this field reflects the most immediate: The Daily Telegraph is owned by Nationwide News Pty Ltd, an entity which is owned by News Pty Limited (News Corp); this field reflects the ownership by Nationwide News.

Entity Name, meaning the name of the entity that operates the outlet according to the Australian Business Register.

ID, meaning a unique identification number for each entity.

ABN, meaning the 11-digit Australian Business Number for the entity according to the Australian Business Register.

Status, meaning the date that the ABN was registered according to the Australian Business Register. In some cases, this field may instead include when the ABN registration was cancelled.

Entity Type, meaning the incorporation structure of the entity according to the Australian Business Register.

Location, meaning the primary business location of the entity according to the Australian Business Register.

Parent Entities, meaning any entity or entities that wholly or partially own the entity.

Child Entities, meaning any entity or entities that are wholly or partially owned by the entity.

Associated Outlets, meaning any outlets that are operated by the entity.

Version fields

In this project a Version is the combination of all data fields that reflect an outlet – its name, format, scale, etc. – between two points in time. Each row in the data reflects a Version.

New Versions are created when a Change occurs. For example, the West QLD Echo opened on 1 June 2020 and closed on 16 September 2020. It has two Versions: one reflecting the opening in June, and one reflecting the closure in September.

ID, meaning a unique identification number for each outlet.

Version ID, meaning a unique identification number for the record Version. This will be in the format ID.XX, meaning the unique identification number for the outlet allocated in the ID field before the decimal point, followed by a sequential number beginning at 01 reflecting the Version of the record after the decimal point. The first Version of the West QLD Echo (ID 782), reflecting its opening in June 2020, is 782.01; the second Version reflecting its closure in September 2020 is 782.02.

Outlet Start, meaning the date that the outlet opened. Where this date is before the commencement of the data (01 January 2019), this date is recorded as 31 December 2018.

Outlet End, meaning the date that the outlet closed, where relevant. Where the outlet is still open, this field is not recorded.

Outlet Status, meaning whether the outlet is Open, Inactive, or Closed in the Version. An outlet will generally be changed from Open to Inactive after a full quarter of no publishing, and from Inactive to Closed after a second consecutive quarter.

Version Start, meaning the date that the Version commences.

Version End, meaning the date that the Version ends, where relevant.

Version Status, meaning whether this Version is the most recent for this record (Current), or whether it has been replaced by a later Version (Superseded).

Change fields

Part of this project is to capture market changes that may significantly alter the news production at a particular outlet. These fields cover these Changes. Recording a Change to an existing record will create a new Version.

Change Category, meaning whether the recorded Change is likely to result in an Expansion in news production, a Contraction in news production, or Other, meaning that the Change is either unlikely to impact news production or that the impact is not reasonably knowable.

Change Type

Recorded Changes are allocated into one of four Change Types.

  1. Outlet Opened, meaning that a new outlet has commenced publishing. This is recorded as an Expansion in news production.
  2. Outlet Closed, meaning that an existing outlet has ceased publishing. This is recorded as a Contraction in news production.
  3. Ownership Change, meaning that the Operating Entity has changed. This is recorded as having an Other impact on news production.
  4. Other, meaning another significant Change. This is allocated to a Change Category according to its potential impact on news production.

Change Description, meaning a narrative description of the Change that has occurred.