National Indigenous Times


The National Indigenous Times is an Indigenous Australian affairs website first published in newspaper form on 27 February 2002. Since late February 2016, it has functioned as an online publication owned by Indigenous businessman and former Kimberley Land Council CEO Wayne Bergmann and Indigenous businessman Clinton Wolf. It was formerly owned and edited by Tony Barrass. The current editor is Hannah Cross.
NIT was originally set up by Owen Carriage, the founder of the Koori Mail.

Major stories

Major news stories broken by the NIT include:
At the first Multicultural Media Awards in September 2012, Gerry Georgatos, then an investigative reporter and feature writer with the NIT, received two awards: Coverage of Indigenous Affairs and Investigative Reporting, and Feature Writing. In three years with NIT Gerry Georgatos delivered breakthrough stories on Native Title, corrupt practices and government neglect of poverty-stricken communities. Georgatos is now a university researcher and has expertise in racism, suicide prevention and Aboriginal issues. His correspondence for NIT was as a volunteer, "bringing to the fore voices from his many travels".
At the 2013 Multicultural and Indigenous Media Awards at the NSW parliament, Georgatos won three awards including Journalist of the Year for his coverage on the extent of suicide among Aboriginal Australians and Torres Strait Islanders. Georgatos was able to secure commitments from the federal Minister of Indigenous Affairs, Nigel Scullion, to increase suicide prevention responses and strategies.

Plagiarism

On 27 February 2012, the Australian Broadcasting Corporation's program Media Watch aired a segment that detailed how the newspaper had repeatedly taken substantial material from other media sources without any attribution. This was addressed by editor Stephen Hagan who promised to deliver more original material and use citations when using external references; Hagan departed in February 2013.

Administration and change of ownership

In January and February 2015, the NIT was placed in administration because of accumulating legal bills arising from a defamation case and an unfair dismissal claim by Hagan. NIT survived administration with a mix of the longstanding owners/founders and a number new part owners. Just before Gerry Georgatos announced in February he was no longer with the newspaper, he went in to bat for the newspaper on National Indigenous Television.
In December 2015, Tony Barrass bought the NIT masthead from Sydney liquidators O'Brien Palmer and successfully launched the online version on 28 February 2016.