Would John Armati be turning in his grave at the prospect of his beloved Dubbo Daily Liberal going weekly?

Probably not: Armati above all, knew when to “hold’em” and when to “fold’em”, selling a share in his regional newspaper group to Fairfax, buying it back again, and eventually selling it to Rural Press (later to become Australian Community Media) for an eyewatering $68.9 million in 1995.

This week ACM announced the Daily Liberal would become a print weekly, as would the (Orange) Central Western Daily and the (Bathurst) Western Advocate, first published in 1848. They will join an Australian tradition of publishing misnomers including the (weekly) Sunshine Coast Daily and the (monthly) Australian Women’s Weekly in a “strategic shift” the publisher says will bring a new future to the local newspapers.

ACM says the focus will be digital on weekdays, with expanded weekend print editions starting on August 24. Weeklies the Oberon Review and Blayney Chronicle will no longer appear in print and the Mudgee Guardian will move from Friday to Saturday.

ACM managing director Tony Kendall blames Facebook owner Meta, saying every one of their mastheads has been affected by the tech giant’s cancellation of news funding arrangements in Australia, “along with rising production expenses and a shift in advertising from newspapers to the digital platforms”.

Reshaping of ACM’s print and digital offering is “a prudent and proactive move to better position these long-standing mastheads for continued success”, he said.

Print had been a fundamental for the cluster of publications in NSW’s Central West, with Dubbo once the home to the biggest newspaper and magazine printing operation outside Sydney, and Armati its greatest proponent and innovator. His father, Leo Armati – reported to have been the son of an Italian priest and a nun who had run away together – had bought the Liberal when he retired in 1949 aged 67, creating Macquarie Publications. John rejoined the business ten years later, buying and selling newspapers, installing a newspaper press in 1970, and innovating with video-display editing and other technology. By the mid-1980s, he had added heatset equipment and was printing magazines for both Fairfax and Consolidated Press. He died in 2017 aged 76.

Fairfax closed its then Goss Community-equipped Dubbo print centre in 2016.

Rural Press had been merged with Fairfax Media in 2006, but was split off again after Nine bought Fairfax in 2018, with Antony Catalano and Thorney Investments’ Alex Waislitz now owners of the Australian Community Media business.

Peter Coleman