Spark is Shoalhaven's independent, public-interest newsletter and website.
Igniting curiosity. Sparking conversation. Kindling community.
Spark Shoalhaven was launched in March 2024 by Cat Holloway, a freelance journalist with a background in news reporting, magazine editing, photography and citizen science.
What's the agenda?
To spark curiosity and encourage connection.
To critically analyse important local issues in more detail than the commercial local news and radio platforms.
I am not a member of a political party, I don't sit on committees, I don't promote products. I'm a born-and-bred Shoalhaven local.
What is Spark?
Spark is an ad-free, independent, public interest media service covering the Shoalhaven region and focusing on stories often ignored by mainstream commercial media outlets.
Subscribe for FREE to get full reading access to the Spark Shoalhaven website and content regularly emailed directly to you. Your subscription drives Spark Shoalhaven to exist. The more subscribers we gain, the more content we provide.
Spark publishes reader-driven content without affiliation to political, business or religious institutions. Knowledge is power and everyone should have unfettered access to reliable information about decisions affecting our home and future.
Spark aims for clear, accessible writing, imagery and audio about the whole gamut of life in the Shoalhaven. We want subscribers to be 'in the know' without scrolling, trolling or paywalls creating barriers between people and knowledge. We look behind the standard headlines and press releases so our readers learn more.
Why do we need Spark?
Regional news services, especially newspapers, are dying - and taking communities down with them. Mastheads that remain have dwindling local content and expensive paywalls blocking content from most of the public who are unwilling to pay to flip through page after page of advertising. News is fundamentally about public interest and should not be determined by corporate or political agendas.
Most media is owned by business people whose commercial priorities shape and potentially censor the information that trickles selectively into our communities. Almost all Australian regional news is owned by those who use their outlets for profit over public service. Publishers of The South Coast Register, Australian Community Media, openly promote their global real estate digital media and agent services business, View Media Group, "consumer and business solutions in Australia’s $300 billion real estate transactional market."
Social media has sent traditional news publishing packing. Small communities connect and share information quickly, for free and in a pocket-sized format that people can read, watch or listen to on the go. But that honeymoon might be over soon as platforms like Facebook no longer cooperate with media outlets for news to be shared on feeds. Social media content is notoriously inaccurate or incomplete and can be a time-consuming distraction tainted by ranters and influencers.
So, email NEWS letters are a means to combine digital multi-media storytelling with old-fashioned journalism to filter out the noise, inform people about decisions that directly affect them and save local news from extinction.
How is Spark produced?
This project is new and evolving day by day, so feel free to offer constructive feedback. We hope Spark will prove popular enough that we can expand our team and the time we spend finding and creating content.
We welcome outside contributions!
We use the open-source Ghost.org platform for independent publishers. Ghost is an all-in-one platform to collect subscribers, send newsletters, publish content, and earn recurring revenue. We do not seek advertisers or editorial sponsors.