Firstly, this column wants to make it clear it hopes INDAILY can survive, even prosper, as an online Queensland news platform.

It’s desperately needed, whether it stays free or not.

But that won’t stop us from taking a bit of mickey out of them, either. You BUGgers out there would expect nothing less, right?

When InQueensland was rebranded as INDAILY on November 6, its email message to subscribers promised all sorts of things, especially “a better, different package of curated local news and information”.

Here are some extracts.

Each day, we will plug you in with breaking local news, relevant opinions, the latest in local business, food and wine, travel, arts and culture, property and design information that you can use.

We plan to deliver a better, different package of curated local news and information that will educate and inspire, bringing together the best our our stories across news and business, plus content from The Weekend Edition and InReview – a full mixture from Queensland’s best sources of what is happening in our state, delivered to you every day.

Best of all, it’s free.

The InDaily Queensland team

Sadly, it’s quite a different story less than three weeks later.

In a fresh email to subscribers on Tuesday, the site’s editorial director Jim Plouffe admitted that a decision by Facebook’s owner Meta earlier this year to stop paying news outlets including his for the news stories it runs on its various platforms “has left InDaily with a big financial hole to fill… to the point we’ve had to scale back our news coverage”.

The MGH is truly sorry that Mega’s decision appears to now be threatening INDAILY’s very existence. But that source of revenue was cut off long before the site’s rebranding and what now appears to be over-the-top marketing spiel not based in fact.

Nevertheless, Jim Plouffe’s appeal for donations – “SUPPORT REAL JOURNALISTS, NOT SOCIAL MEDIA GIANTS” – is heartfelt and real.

Go onto the INDAILY website and help them out if you can with a one-off or regular donation.

EDITOR’S NOTE: We use INDAILY in caps because that’s what the newssite’s masthead is in. As you can see from this post, missives from the people who run the bloody thing use the upper-and-lower case InDaily. Anyone out there got any idea which one is right?

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