IT has been a tough couple of weeks for media, and in particular for print.
This glorious old form that has helped shape two centuries and brought you your news on the front doorstep has had more doomsayers in a fortnight than in a decade.
Commercial imperatives have raised a new level of alarm for those who value news as a vital organ in the body of democracy
Bleeding Fairfax, owner of this paper, is besieged by the juggernaut of mining wealth trumpeting questionable motives toward its editorial integrity.
On the other hand, the global empire of Rupert Murdoch has taken a radical step toward severing his beloved print business from its lucrative entertainment
arm.
What consequences this has for the loss-making papers of News Limited remains to be seen.
The digital revolution has taken few prisoners.
Worst hit have been those where the luxury of costly journalism was sustained by an increasingly old fashioned model of revenue.
Even those who refused to see the writing are now muttering of imminent doom. Even so, there is life in the old dog yet!
To reprieve this picture of ineluctable gloom, Ballarat readers should look no further than their own masthead, The Courier.
Along with our energetic and highly successful inroads into the brave new world of digital media, it is also a newspaper that continues to matter to its community.
We have a digital audience almost twice the population of Ballarat, and sold enough print copies in a year to give a copy to every single resident in Victoria.
If metropolitan newspapers could lay claim to the levels of audience penetration or reader-to-population ratios The Courier can boast of, there might not be such a pall of gloom.
This news organisation has grown up with this city and will grow old with it, greeting each new generation with innovation and the best platforms to bring it the news that matters.
That means digital but it also means print.
There are many people in this city who still love their newspaper and we are proud to say we will continue to invest in it.
We have a newsroom full of talent, eager to build upon the history-forged community bonds and bring you the news in the form you want it.
Theirs is not a spirit of gloom.
