About Redland Bayside News

Redland Bayside News

Overview

Redland Bayside News is a free weekly newspaper serving Redland City, the bayside local government area on the southern shore of Moreton Bay, south-east of Brisbane in Queensland. Published by the independent Local News Group and produced from an office in Shore Street West, Cleveland — the city’s administrative centre — the paper appears in print and online each week for readers across the mainland suburbs of the Redlands and promotes local pickup locations where copies can be collected. Its coverage spans council politics, sport, entertainment, lifestyle, real estate and community news, the mix its founders promised when the title was launched in 2023 to fill the gap left by the closure of the district’s long-running paid weekly.

The paper is a young title carrying an older tradition. Redland City, which recorded a population of 159,222 at the 2021 census, had been served for decades by a succession of local weeklies, most recently the Redland City Bulletin. When that paper closed in April 2023, the district briefly had no dedicated local newspaper of its own. Local News Group, led by publisher David Johnston, stepped in within weeks, and the new paper has published continuously since, first under the name Redland City News and, by April 2025, under its current Redland Bayside News nameplate. It is listed among the publications of the Australian Press Council’s constituent bodies in the Council’s September 2026 list, under its publisher, Local News Group.

History

Local newspaper publishing in the Redlands long predates the present title. The Bayside Bulletin published its first issue on 28 August 1984 under Redland Publishers and appeared weekly on Tuesdays. On 2 July 2014 the Bulletin merged with its stablemate the Redland Times to form the Redland City Bulletin, a single weekly for the whole city. The Bulletin passed through the industry’s consolidation of the late 2010s — from Fairfax Media to Nine in July 2018, and then to Australian Community Media (ACM) in April 2019 — before ACM closed it in April 2023 as part of the continuing contraction of regional and suburban print.

The closure prompted an unusually fast local response. In the edition of 11–17 May 2023, the first issue of the replacement paper, Redland City News, the editor told readers that after the Bulletin’s closure “Local News Group led by publisher David Johnston has stepped in to fill the void and will publish a free newspaper in print and online for the community to enjoy every week”, promising coverage of politics, sport, entertainment, lifestyle, real estate and community news. The new title adopted the free-distribution model that had become standard for surviving suburban weeklies: no cover price, funded by advertising, and dropped at pickup points around the district.

At some point between its 2023 launch and the autumn of 2025 the paper took its present name, Redland Bayside News; the exact date of the change is not documented in the sources consulted for this profile, but the edition of 10–16 April 2025 already carried the new nameplate, and editions under the Redland Bayside News masthead were still appearing at the end of 2025, including the issue of 11–17 December 2025. The group also publishes a companion title, the Bayside Weekly News, for the Wynnum and Manly bayside suburbs to the north, editions of which were appearing by March 2024, making the Redland paper one half of a small two-title bayside operation rather than a standalone startup.

Programming and Content

The paper’s editorial formula is the classic suburban-weekly blend, weighted towards the institutions its readers deal with directly. Council affairs are a staple: its reporting on Redland City Council debates — including a contested council submission on koala habitat protection and vegetation management, in which a councillor defended protecting “life and infrastructure first” after storm damage — has been picked up and cited by industry media outside the district. Community-service journalism is prominent, from reporting on overflowing public bins frustrating residents at Victoria Point to coverage of local fundraising efforts such as the Victoria Point Sharks’ planned 72-hour walk to raise $100,000.

Sport, entertainment, lifestyle and real estate round out the mix promised at launch, alongside community news about schools, clubs and local groups across suburbs such as Cleveland, Capalaba, Victoria Point, Thornlands, Birkdale and Redland Bay, and the bay islands readership the district’s papers have traditionally served. The December 2025 masthead credits a compact newsroom: journalists Brian Bennion and Linda Muller, with contributors Sloan Wilkins and Suzie Tafolo, under Group Editor Andrew Jefferson — a structure consistent with a small independent weekly whose reporters cover the whole city between them.

Audience and Reach

Redland Bayside News is aimed at the households of Redland City, a largely suburban and semi-rural community of just over 159,000 people (2021 census) spread between Brisbane’s eastern edge and the Moreton Bay shoreline, taking in mainland suburbs and ferry-served island communities. As a free paper, its reach is built on availability rather than subscription: print copies are promoted through local pickup locations, and the same content is published free online, so the readership model depends on habitual weekly collection and browsing rather than paid circulation. The publisher has not published an audited circulation figure in the sources consulted, and no readership number is claimed here.

The district is a distinct media market. It sits within Brisbane’s metropolitan orbit but has its own council, its own state and federal representation and a strong local identity as the Redlands Coast, and its residents’ day-to-day concerns — council rates and planning, koala and bushland management, island transport, local sport — are covered in depth by few other outlets since the Bulletin’s closure. That gap is the paper’s founding rationale and its competitive position: it competes for attention with Brisbane metropolitan media and council communications, but it is the only dedicated weekly newspaper produced in and for Redland City.

Digital Presence

The paper publishes online at redlandbaysidenews.com.au, where its local reporting appears as dated articles; its stories are indexed and cited by other outlets, including national industry publications that attribute reporting to “Redland Bayside News” when covering Redlands issues. Full print editions are also distributed digitally as page-turning e-editions — the 11–17 December 2025 edition, for example, was published as an online flipbook carrying the paper’s complete masthead and content — giving island and absentee readers access to the same paper that appears at mainland pickup points. Readers can contact the newsroom through the editor’s published email address, editor@redlandbaysidenews.com.au, which the paper prints in its editions.

Ownership and Organisation

Redland Bayside News is owned and published by Local News Group, the independent publishing group led by publisher David Johnston that launched the title in May 2023 and also publishes the companion Bayside Weekly News. The masthead of the 11–17 December 2025 edition records the organisation plainly: “Publisher: Local News Group”, with David Johnston as publisher, Andrew Jefferson as Group Editor, Julie Burton as Advertising Manager and Paul Stuart as designer, working from Shore Street West, Cleveland (telephone 3821 1153). The group’s titles sit within the Australian Press Council framework: the Council’s September 2026 list of constituent bodies’ publications includes both Redland Bayside News and Bayside Weekly News under Local News Group, alongside the group’s other Queensland community titles.

Contact and Availability

Redland Bayside News is a free weekly, available in print at promoted pickup locations around Redland City and in full online at redlandbaysidenews.com.au, where current stories and digital editions can be read without a subscription. The newsroom is based in Shore Street West, Cleveland, Queensland, and editorial enquiries can be directed to editor@redlandbaysidenews.com.au. The paper publishes weekly in print and updates its website as stories are filed.