Businesses In Brisbane Are Boycotting The Courier Mail Over Its Awful Front Page Yesterday
What a great idea.
Yesterday the Courier Mail managed to outdo itself in sheer tabloid nastiness, reporting on the tragic murder of Indonesian transgender woman Mayang Prasetyo by her partner Marcus Volke with a pretty revolting headline:
Nasty. Brisbane’s @couriermail slurs slain trans woman with ‘she male’ headline today: http://t.co/2kACt4vgUo pic.twitter.com/79DCbm4ND9
— SameSame.com.au (@samesame) October 6, 2014
News Corp papers run with grotesque front pages on the regular, but yesterday’s Courier Mail has sparked especially vigorous and widespread condemnation on social media. The newspaper’s half-arsed “clarification” in today’s edition hasn’t exactly helped matters either.
Hey @couriermail, there’s a word. Sorry. It would have been well placed in this piece. pic.twitter.com/Jx3R0loAcD
— Vicki (@Iamverysmart) October 7, 2014
Now, it seems, businesses in Brisbane are deciding to show their distaste for News Corps’ editorial style by hitting the Courier Mail where it hurts: in the hip-pocket. The Bowerbird Cafe in Brisbane’s Wavell Heights announced on its Facebook page that it will no longer sell the Courier Mail or any News Corp newspapers
The reaction from customers and fans has been overwhelmingly positive, with people commending the cafe on its stance and promising to help increase its patronage.
The owners of another Brisbane cafe, the Shutter & Brew, have followed suit, posting an announcement that they will no longer be supplying the Courier-Mail in their cafe, along with a link to a GetUp petition demanding the Courier Mail apologise.
Newspapers have never been more vulnerable to this kind of thing; the Courier Mail‘s circulation fell by ten percent from late 2012 to late 2013 alone, and cafes are a major proxy distributor of newspapers by virtue of being almost the only businesses who still regularly buy them. The Courier Mail best hope disgust at its latest antics doesn’t translate into a more substantive boycott by Brisbane businesses, or it could find itself even less read in its home city than it is already.