From mining to Meta: the slow decline of Broken Hill’s only newspaper

When Craig Brealey started his journalism cadetship at Broken Hill's union-run Barrier Daily Truth newspaper in 1978, it was a thriving newsroom.

"There would be people coming and going all night, doors slamming, people yelling, it was a lot of fun," says Brealey. "The door was always open, people could come in off the street."

The tabloid had been a cornerstone of the outback New South Wales community since 1897. Operating first as a weekly news sheet and then a daily tabloid from 1908, by the 1970s the paper employed about 80 people including photographers, typesetters and printing plate setters.

"The editor used to smoke a big cigar and I just remember the first day I walked in there I noticed the smell of cigar smoke and newsprint and the clatter of typewriters," Brealey says. "It's a fond memory; that's newspapers for me."

Brealey returned to work at the Barrier Daily Truth several times before his retirement in 2021, racking up more than 30 years at the paper. When he left for the last time, it was published just two days a week and employed 40 people. "It doesn't have that sort of swagger any more," he said. "Nowadays, it's merely a sterile office space with computers and the harsh glare of fluorescent lights."

The pressure to produce more stories from fewer staff had stretched the paper thin.

"They're flat out, it's not a very enjoyable job any more," he said.