About InDaily

InDaily

InDaily is South Australia's independent daily news platform, published from Adelaide at indaily.com.au by the locally owned publisher Solstice Media. Born from a weekly print newspaper that could not survive the economics of print, it has grown into one of the most significant producers of public interest journalism in South Australia — a free, advertising-supported alternative voice in a market long dominated by News Corporation titles. With a compact core newsroom, a large email subscriber base and a stable of specialist newsletters, it has become a daily habit for the state's decision-makers and cultural leaders.

Overview

InDaily publishes South Australian news across politics, business, arts, sport and community affairs, alongside national and world coverage, in text, pictures, audio and video. The operation is deliberately lean: the newsroom runs with eight core team members plus contributors and freelancers, a fraction of the staffing of its national rivals, yet its output has earned it a place among the country's most-read news sites. The publishing model is free at the point of use, supported by advertising, sponsored content, events and voluntary reader donations made in the name of supporting independent journalism. The platform is built around its newsletters — the flagship morning email plus specialist products such as Business Insight, Regional News and The Forager — which deliver the journalism directly to subscribers' inboxes. The site's editorial stance is independent by design: Solstice Media was founded specifically to provide an alternative media voice in Adelaide, and InDaily's journalism is written and edited by media professionals working to industry standards with the stated aim of objective coverage.

History

InDaily's origins lie in The Independent Weekly, a weekly independent newspaper established in Adelaide in September 2004 by Solstice Media's founders, including current managing director Paul Hamra. Published on Saturdays and selling for A$2.50, the paper set out to offer critical, intellectually substantial coverage of local issues and to champion the arts in Adelaide, at a time when the city's newspaper market was served solely by News Corp publications. On the anniversary of its first year in operation, the paper launched an online subscriber daily news service called InDaily. In March 2006 The Independent Weekly switched to a tabloid format and moved its release from Sunday to Saturday, and its international coverage was sourced from The Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times and The Independent in London, with additional material from Fairfax and AFP. But the economics of a small-circulation print weekly proved unforgiving: circulation fell from a peak of 12,000 in mid-2008 to fewer than 8,000 a week by November 2010, and that month the paper ceased physical publication. InDaily — by then established as a newsletter and website with some 30,000 subscribers — replaced it entirely.

The digital successor thrived where the print parent had struggled. Freed from printing and distribution costs, InDaily grew its subscriber base and readership through the 2010s, expanding from a single daily email into a full news platform with specialist newsletters and a growing website audience. Solstice Media built a diversified publishing business around it: CityMag, a weekly digital magazine and quarterly print magazine established in 2013; SALIFE, a monthly print lifestyle magazine; InReview, an arts and culture webzine supported by philanthropy and grant funding; InQueensland, a public interest journalism project modelled on InDaily; and, from December 2024, the national online newspaper The New Daily, acquired from Industry Super Holdings. In 2025 Solstice acquired the 7am podcast from Schwartz Media, adding audio to its portfolio. The company, which employs around 80 people, describes itself as the largest independent media company in South Australia, and it has been an active participant in national debates on media policy, including submissions to a federal parliamentary inquiry into regional newspapers and to the ACCC on the News Media Bargaining Code, arguing for fair treatment of small independent publishers.

Content and Programming

InDaily's daily file is unapologetically South Australian. State politics — the workings of the South Australian parliament, government policy and the Adelaide City Council — sits at the core, alongside business coverage of the state's defence, mining, energy, wine and agriculture sectors. The arts receive dedicated attention through both InDaily itself and its sister publication InReview, reflecting the company's roots in the Independent Weekly's championing of Adelaide's cultural life. Sport, community news, weather and lifestyle round out the offering, with national and international stories providing context. The specialist newsletters allow depth in particular verticals: Business Insight for the state's commercial community, Regional News for country South Australia, and The Forager for food and drink. Beyond publishing, Solstice has run the "40 Under 40" awards since 2018, recognising leadership among South Australians under 40 — an event that doubles as both community engagement and a statement of the company's investment in the state's future.

Coverage and Audience

InDaily serves Adelaide and South Australia, with its journalism travelling nationally when state stories warrant wider attention. Its audience metrics reflect remarkable growth for an independent regional publisher. The company has reported more than 60,000 subscribers to the InDaily news product, and told a federal parliamentary inquiry that Nielsen measured its monthly readership at around 771,000, placing it 22nd among Australian news sites — a significant achievement, in its own assessment, for a site focused on public interest journalism. More recent company figures cite more than 452,000 monthly readers and 58,000 email subscribers, alongside tens of thousands of social media followers. The readership is notably influential: Solstice describes InDaily as the essential daily habit for Adelaide's decision-makers and cultural leaders, and its advertising proposition rests on access to that affluent, engaged audience through display, native content, solus emails, social channels and event sponsorships. As an avowed alternative voice to News Corp in a concentrated market, its audience includes many South Australians actively seeking independent coverage of their state.

Ownership

InDaily is owned and published by Solstice Media, a South Australian-owned and headquartered independent media company founded in 2004. The current managing director is Paul Hamra, one of the company's founding investors, and the editor of InDaily is Belinda Willis. Solstice's portfolio spans InDaily in South Australia, InQueensland, The New Daily in Melbourne, CityMag, SALIFE Magazine, The Weekend Edition, InReview and The Southern Cross, making it a diversified independent publisher with national reach anchored in Adelaide. The commercial model blends advertising, sponsored content, events, philanthropy and grant funding for specialist titles, and voluntary reader donations for InDaily itself. The company's public positioning stresses its independence: founded to provide an alternative voice where only News Corp titles existed, it presents itself as proof that independent, locally owned public interest journalism can be commercially viable in the digital era.

Digital Presence

The indaily.com.au website is the centre of the operation, designed for desktop and mobile with breaking news, video and the full archive of the site's journalism. But the newsletters are arguably the brand's defining digital product: the morning email and its specialist siblings deliver the news directly to tens of thousands of inboxes, a relationship with readers that predates the social media era and has survived it. On social platforms InDaily maintains active accounts that extend its stories' reach, and its journalism is distributed through search and aggregators. The digital strategy reflects the company's philosophy of meeting readers where they are: free access, multiple formats, and a direct email relationship that insulates the title, at least partially, from the algorithmic fortunes of the platforms. From a print weekly that closed in 2010 to a digital platform reaching hundreds of thousands of monthly readers, InDaily's trajectory is one of the clearest examples in Australian media of a publication that found its future by abandoning paper.