Subscribe Free
The Daily Cairns

Cairns news, every day

About us

Cairns deserves a daily newspaper

The Daily Cairns is an independent, locally focused daily newsroom serving Cairns and the Far North.

Our mission

To give Cairns residents a trustworthy, plainly written record of what is happening in their city — every morning, free to read.

Why Cairns needs local news

Cairns sits more than 1,700 kilometres from the Queensland capital. Decisions about our airport, our reef, our hospital and our council are made here, by people you can run into at the supermarket — yet for years the city has had less and less dedicated local reporting.

National outlets parachute in for cyclones and crocodile stories, then leave. Real local news — the council meeting that changes your rates, the planning application down the road, the community fundraiser that needs a hand — happens in the spaces those outlets don't cover.

That gap matters. Without consistent local reporting, residents find out about decisions after they've been made, small businesses lose a reliable place to reach their neighbours, and council and state agencies face less scrutiny. A city without a daily local newspaper is a city that runs on hearsay.

The Daily Cairns exists to close that gap. We publish every weekday, we cite our sources, and we make the brief free so that the cost of being informed in Cairns is zero.

Our team

We are a small, named team — every story is owned by a person, not an algorithm.

  • Shane Anderson

    Founder & Publisher

    Shane founded the Daily Network to give Australian cities a reliable, independent daily newspaper again — starting with Canberra and now covering Cairns.

  • Hana Mitchell

    Editor

    Hana leads the Cairns desk. She came to Far North Queensland from a regional newsroom and oversees what runs on the front page each morning.

  • Jake Carmichael

    Journalist — Council & Courts

    Jake covers Cairns Regional Council, the Magistrates Court and state agencies. He files most of the public-records reporting that ends up in the briefing.

  • Lily Tran

    Community Reporter

    Lily writes our suburb-by-suburb stories, the weekend events guide and the people-of-Cairns profiles. If you have a tip from your street, she wants to hear it.

Our principles

  • Accuracy

    Every claim is sourced. Where we get something wrong we correct it openly, on the article and in our annual transparency report.

  • Fairness

    We seek a response from anyone named in a critical story before publication, and we publish corrections and rights-of-reply in full.

  • Independence

    We accept no government or political-party funding. Editorial decisions are made independently of advertisers and sponsors.

  • Community

    Cairns is a small city. We write for the residents who live here, not for an interstate audience or an algorithm.

Read more in our editorial standards and our annual transparency report.

Contact directory

Publisher

The Daily Cairns is part of the Daily Network, owned and operated by SP Experts Pty Ltd. ABN: 00 000 000 000.

The Daily Network — local news across Australia

More local news across Australia from our sister mastheads.