The Age celebrated its 150th anniversary in October 2004 proud that it had survived many challenges and acutely aware that new challenges - commercial and regulatory - were not far off.
The Howard government, thwarted in its previous attempts to change the regulations governing media ownership, was signalling it was ready to revisit the issue using its recently acquired majority in the Senate.
On 4 April this year (2007) the biggest shake-up in the nation's media laws for two decades came into effect.
Communications Minister Helen Coonan's package of media laws overturned the restrictions on media proprietors owning more than one form the traditional media - newspapers, radio or television - that former Labor Prime Minister Paul Keating had famously said meant media moguls could be princes of print or queens of the screen.
Senator Coonan's laws comprise seven main changes:
1. Media moguls can now own two out of the three traditional media forms. Originally the minister wanted all restrictions on cross-media ownership scrapped but an amendment was proposed in the coalition party room by treasurer Peter Costello, and passed by parliament late last year.
2. Bans on foreign ownership of Australia's media have been removed. Previously, a 20 per cent foreign ownership limit applied.
3. A new `voices' test has been created, ensuring that five separate media outlets continue to serve metropolitan markets, and four in the bush. According to industry analysts, Melbourne presently has 10 media `voices'. In other words, under the new laws the existing number of voices could be halved.
4. Consumers will need to buy a set-top box between 2010 and 2012 to watch digital tv. At that date the existing analogue signal will be switched off.
5. New digital services will be introduced later this year, the so-called Channels A and B, after an auction. The former will be in-home services for television, with specialist programs devoted to things like the weather, parliament and home shopping. The latter will comprise programs sent to mobile phones and other handheld devices.
6. The nation's free-to-air television networks are able now to broadcast an extra `multi-channel' in high definition. Some of the networks have, slowly, begun doing this.
7. Give the Australian Communications and Media Authority (ACMA) new powers to enforce local content provisions in radio stations in the bush.
Under the proposals, The Age could end up as part of a multi-media group aligned to a television network and a stable of radio stations. It could be owned by a British or American media conglomerate. Our employers at Fairfax Media could use the changes to buy into television and radio and expand their business in other directions through convergent technologies. Other media owners in radio, television or the internet are just as likely see it as an opportunity to add a newspaper to their empires.
The Age Independence Committee is interested in the quality of the newspaper's journalism and maintaining the diversity of media voices in Australia .
In an era of rapidly changing media technology, tighter budgets and increasing commercial pressures, we are wary of what the changes might mean in terms of preserving the integrity of The Age and the health of the Australian media more broadly.