Over the past two years, it has been an absolute privilege and a pleasure to publish Ballina News Daily. However, I have made the difficult decision that the time has come to cease publication.

It is not a decision I have made lightly. My health has been an important factor and I have reached the point where I need to take some medical advice seriously.

But this isn’t simply about stepping back. It is also about making room for other opportunities and challenges, and deciding where I want to put my time and energy in the years ahead.

I have loved telling the stories of our community, meeting so many interesting people and being invited to share important moments and events in people’s lives.

Local journalism gives you a remarkable window into a community. You meet the people who quietly make things happen, celebrate their successes and tell stories that might otherwise never be told.

Those are the parts of the job I will miss enormously.

In many ways, Ballina News Daily has also brought me full circle.

I started working in local news at 19, straight out of high school, and I have always loved it. After pursuing a business career and other opportunities, including serving in local government, I always intended to return to local journalism in my later years.

Ballina News Daily allowed me to do that. I feel I’ve ticked that box, and it has been a great adventure.

I’ve joked with friends recently that perhaps I’m getting a little too old to be chasing ambulances and fire engines.

There’s some truth behind the joke. Local journalism also means dealing with accidents, crime, tragedy and people experiencing some of the worst moments of their lives. Reporting those events is important, but I can’t pretend I have enjoyed that side of the job. Quite the opposite.

Add to that the relentless nature of daily news, where a story can break at almost any time, and I have had to acknowledge that the stress involved has not always been good for my health.

What makes the decision particularly difficult is that Ballina News Daily has been extraordinarily successful in finding an audience.

In our biggest weeks, more than 20,000 unique readers have visited the site. For a publication devoted almost entirely to one local government area, I think that is phenomenal and demonstrates the strong appetite for genuinely local news.

I want to thank everyone who has read our stories, shared them, commented on them, sent in a tip, picked up the phone or trusted us with a story.

I also want to thank the journalists and other contributors who’ve helped make Ballina News Daily what it became, along with the many people behind the scenes who have offered advice, encouragement and practical help.

But local news publishing is a tough business.

The audience is there. The difficulty is generating enough advertising revenue to pay for the journalism readers clearly want, particularly when so much advertising money now goes to global digital platforms such as Meta and Google.

Ballina News Daily has been fortunate this year to receive assistance through the Federal Government’s Journalism Assistance Fund. I am genuinely grateful for that support and it has helped us continue producing local journalism.

But personally, I don’t believe relying on government funding is a sustainable long-term business model. Ultimately, local journalism needs a commercial foundation that allows it to stand on its own feet.

So I would encourage everyone who values local journalism to support the local media that remain, particularly local businesses deciding where to spend their advertising dollars.

Facebook is not a replacement for journalism.

Journalism requires someone to attend the council meeting, read the documents, ask questions, check facts, make phone calls and follow a story when the answers don’t quite add up.

That takes time and resources, and I have enormous respect for everyone who continues doing that work in regional and local media.

Most of all, thank you for reading Ballina News Daily, for trusting us with your stories and for supporting what we set out to do.

I’m enormously proud of what we have achieved together.

I’ve had the opportunity to return to where my working life began, doing something I still love. I’m very glad I did it.

But now it feels like the right time to move on. There are other things I want to do, other challenges ahead and, I hope, a few more adventures still to come.

Rod Bruem
Founder and Editor
Ballina News Daily