Independent media celebrates 20 years in Adelaide
Twenty years ago this week, the first edition of The Independent Weekly newspaper was published – a bold move to provide South Australians with an alternative media voice.
That project continues today through InDaily.
We revisit that tumultuous first edition and talk to the key players who finally broke Adelaide’s media monopoly.
Origins of independence
In 1992, South Australia was in turmoil.
The State Bank’s financial implosion the year before was moving like a tsunami across the state’s economic and political landscape. Premier John Bannon resigned and, in another generational change, afternoon newspaper The News closed its doors.
While it was more a result of a changing media landscape than economic downturn, the closure of The News left Adelaide as a one-newspaper town, at arguably one of the most crucial times in South Australia’s history.
The monopoly endured until September 19, 2004, when a group of South Australian investors, led by PR man Paul Hamra, formed Solstice Media and pulled off what had been considered unthinkable in the state’s media market – they launched a metropolitan newspaper.
The Independent Weekly was a fully-fledged broadsheet newspaper, designed to break stories alongside opinion, sport and extensive arts and culture coverage.
One year after its first edition, it spawned a digital version called InDaily. Six years after the launch of InDaily, the company made the bold decision to throw all of its resources into the digital world of news, closing the printed newspaper, but keeping the original spirit of independent journalism.
Today, we celebrate the first edition of The Independent Weekly – a project that the media establishment believed would never survive.
In 2004, Rupert Murdoch’s News Corporation held its last AGM in Adelaide before shifting its headquarters to the US.
In 2004, Rupert Murdoch’s News Corporation held its last AGM in Adelaide before shifting its headquarters to the US.
On Deadline
Paul Hamra was an unlikely media mogul, in many ways.
He was running his own PR and marketing company and was getting sick of people complaining to him about the state of the media in Adelaide.
When Young and Rubicam bought his business, he decided it was time to take action on what then seemed like an impossible dream.
“We planned our venture for about 12 months, and presented it to a number of investors,” he said. “To our surprise, the investors felt the same way about the local media as we did and were happy to get on board and invest.”
Building the team began with the editor – and Hamra’s choice was deliberately controversial.
“We approached well-known Adelaide journalist Alex Kennedy – she knew business and how Adelaide worked through her time at BRW, News Limited and in politics (on the Liberal side). We knew she would ruffle feathers.
“Alex built a small team around her, mostly experienced Adelaide journalists – Peter Gill, Nick Carne, Ian Williams, Marie McInerney, Joan Atkinson, Kerry Wakefield. There were also lots of contributors such as John Schumann, Eric Beecher, Edna Carew on money and Geoff Kingston on sport. Experienced ad man John Hart was looking after advertising sales with a small team of hungry salespeople.”
Inaugural editor Alex Kennedy (right) with features editor Kerry Wakefield (centre) and senior designer Jo Jamieson.
Inaugural editor Alex Kennedy (right) with features editor Kerry Wakefield (centre) and senior designer Jo Jamieson.
Once the team was in place, roadblocks immediately began to appear.
“The hardest part in the lead-up to the launch was to get the newsagents to deliver the product,” Hamra says. “They had a meeting at the Newsagents' Association about us. There was scepticism, even resistance. We were hearing there was a lot of pressure on these small family businesses by the established players – their main clients – not to cooperate with us as a new entrant in the market.
“The delivery newsagents were the hardest to crack. We had to go around to their homes after hours and get them to sign a contract to be an agent to deliver and sell our newspapers – or we were dead. We took the charm offensive and I am glad to say we signed up every agent in Adelaide, one by one.”
From start to publication day was only a matter of months.
“It felt like climbing Everest, but the worst part was we couldn’t rest when we got to the top because we had to climb it again the next day. By week four people were exhausted and the place was tense.”
Page One
Veteran finance journalist Peter Gill wrote the splash, with the first edition edited by fierce Adelaide media veteran Alex Kennedy.
Gill, who began his career in Adelaide, had worked far and wide, including for the Australian Financial Review and start-up paper Business Daily.
He was working in far north Queensland teaching journalism students when he heard Kennedy talking about the newspaper’s impending launch while listening to the ABC’s media report on Radio National.
Gill sent her an email wishing her well – she called and offered him a job.
Soon, he was back in the town he’d left two decades earlier.
“It was exciting stuff. The fact that you were creating a new newspaper that was going to deal with issues and be an alternative – that in itself was an exciting enterprise.
“There’s not many times in a journalism career that you get the chance to be part of a new product.”
It was also a huge challenge. His Adelaide contact book was far from full after so long away and the then State Government worked hard to play down his story.
The Independent Weekly would go on to have many stronger front pages, but Gill’s piece still stands as an interesting piece of political intrigue. The essence of it was that Karlene Maywald, a National Party member recruited earlier that year to the Rann ministry, had explored her options of switching to federal politics, and a senior position in the Howard Government, only weeks before getting on board with Labor in SA.
It’s the kind of story InDaily would leap on today.
But Gill says it was considered harshly by other media in Adelaide.
“People went to a lot of effort to diminish the efforts of a newspaper that was just starting to walk,” he says.
“It was dispiriting to see your colleagues criticising it. You’d think it would have been welcome but it wasn’t by the other media. I will never understand that.”
“The amount of paranoia that come out of the established apple cart was extraordinary.”
Kennedy, by contrast, simply didn’t care about the criticism.
“It’s a personality thing,” she says. “That never bothered me – it shows that you’re doing the right thing.”
Kennedy herself also had several stories in that first edition – one getting stuck into the Government over its approach to Freedom of Information and another, rather prescient piece about electricity grid.
The most junior member of the editorial team was cadet reporter Vince Ciccarello, who was 40-years-old at the time.
“I was the oldest cadet in the world,” Ciccarello laughs.
Now Director of Development and Philanthropy at Pembroke School, he had taken a diversion into journalism from a career focused mostly on music.
“My byline wasn’t in that first edition, but I did do the kinds of things that cadets were expected to do – like the tide times,” he recalls.
“I did get bylines and front page stories – eventually.”
He says it was an exciting time for him – but not everyone felt the same way in Adelaide.
“Suddenly there was this new kid of the block and the establishment would have to deal with another voice. It wasn’t embraced with open arms – but I didn’t know any different.”
Page 6
Alex Kennedy was a polarising figure in Adelaide in 2004.
Not that she cared, then or now.
Kennedy was an experienced journalist, but also well-known as an adviser to Liberal Premier John Olsen and a combative player in South Australian politics during a particularly divisive period on North Terrace.
Hamra’s objective in appointing her was to shake things up – and Kennedy had no qualms about making enemies.
She says she can’t remember much about that first edition, but her contribution in print – apart from pulling the whole thing together – still resonates, years later.
It was a long read – across pages six and seven – warning that South Australia’s growing wind farm industry had potential downsides that hadn’t been considered by policy-makers.
Back then, wind farms were controversial primarily due to far-fetched theories about their health impacts.
For Kennedy, though, the concerns were more concrete: the potential effect on power prices, and the lack of an obvious solution to wind power’s inherent, intermittent nature.
“… wind power brings with it the potential for network instability and power-quality problems, plus a worst-case scenario of blackouts,” she wrote.
It was a highly detailed piece, many years ahead of the renewable energy debate that traversed this exact territory in the following decade.
“No-one would listen at the time,” she says.
Today, she acknowledges the first edition as the start of something important – and enduring – for Adelaide.
And part of that, as her wind energy piece shows, was questioning more deeply and shaking up the received wisdom.
“I think the first edition showed the people of Adelaide that there was room for another voice,” she says.
She argues The Independent took in a bigger picture that was sometimes missed by the mainstream news outlets at the time.
“I think The Independent opened that up and we went out there and broke a lot of stories,” she says. “To be frank, I think The Advertiser lifted its game (as a response).”
Politicians were also forced to take notice.
“I think politicians realised it wasn’t so cosy any more.
“Sometimes, people think they’re supposed to be liked but that wasn’t something that drove me or I cared about.
“It changed Adelaide. It broke the boys’ club, if you like.”
On the presses
The first edition went to press on Saturday, September 18 (the following week Port Adelaide would win its first AFL premiership, making the front page of the second edition).
The paper was printed at Rural Press in Murray Bridge, with Hamra and the team assembling at the press to watch their hard work come to life.
“We all headed to the Murray Bridge Hotel for more exhausted celebrating,” he recalls.
“We found out much later, one major newspaper (guess who) set up spies along the freeway to take photos and follow the trucks to gain intelligence on our new product.
“This particular company was very aggressive with newsagents, advertisers and investors in the lead up to our launch.
“The Advertiser's editor at the time said in a radio interview about our start-up that he didn't care if it sold 40 or 400,000 copies, it was competition and he would do what he could to stop it in its tracks.”
Hamra’s team had expected to sell 10,000 copies – after day one, 24,000 copies had been snapped up.
“On Monday morning I received two calls of note,” he says. “One from the marketing manager of Carsales.com.au asking if they could advertise in our newspaper because their new web directory was unknown in Adelaide and other media would not take their ads. Yes please.
“Then, I was contacted by real estate brand, Domain with a similar request. There were very high hopes in those early days.”
Of course, the newspaper game is a tough one – and was about to get tougher with the imminent invention of the iPhone and the Facebook juggernaut.
Kennedy says she had a sense that September 19, 2004, was a landmark day for Adelaide.
“While I don’t remember the first edition that well, I think was the start of something fantastic that goes on today, which is another strong media voice in the city.”
The legacy
The Independent Weekly was published as a weekly print newspaper until November 2010, when Solstice Media’s board made the decision to throw all of its resources and effort into InDaily – the daily digital version of the Independent.
InDaily had grown to outstrip the print product in readership and advertising revenue but going digital was a brave decision.
Since then, InDaily has enjoyed strong readership growth and maintains the fierce spirit of independence that Kennedy and the original team instilled.
This spirit has been passed to the journalists who have come to work on the titles bought by Hamra to expand InDaily's reach and breadth, including CityMag and SALIFE.
Besides these titles, like many independent publishers across the world InDaily has also expanded its offering to include popular events that celebrate the strength of local communities.
Young leaders are given a stepping stone through the 40 Under 40 program, while the important work being done outside Adelaide is reported through Regional Showcase. In the past decade, the South Australian Business Index has become a mainstay of business news in the state.
With all these changes, Hamra says his original vision is intact.
“Looking back over all the bumps, and there have been a lot, the highlight has to be seeing so many people – staff, investors, donors, advertisers and readers – sharing the single vision of creating a different media voice in Adelaide because they feel it is important. And it is.”
Ciccarello says the fact that the independent voice has survived is a story of resilience.
“The fact that it’s still here 20 years later is an incredible testament to Paul Hamra and the people who have backed it since way back then,” he says.
Alex Kennedy says the growth of an independent media voice has changed Adelaide, not least of which by keeping the city's power elite on their toes.
“People now know that their story will probably be told – and it will probably be told by InDaily,” she says.
Today, Solstice Media is the publisher of InDaily, SALIFE, CityMag, InQueensland and InReview. In 2013, Solstice established Motion Publishing in Melbourne to operate The New Daily national news website.
Roll call – the first Independent Weekly editorial team
Editor – Alex Kennedy
Deputy Editor – Peter Gill
in magazine editor - Kerry Wakefield
Writers – Joan Atkinson, Nick Carne, Marie McInerney, Vincent Ciccarello
Regular contributors – Eric Beecher, Edna Carew, Brian Hale, Peter De Ionno, John Schumann, Chris Snow, Melissa Sweet, Andrew Symon, Catherine Wolthuizen
Production editor/chief sub-editor – Gary Wasserman
Production manager – Murray Darker
Senior designer – Jo Jamieson
Photography – James Knowler and Bryan Charlton
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