(Image: Supplied)

There’s never been an easy time to launch a publication, and never an easy time to try to predict what will happen in Queensland. But Solstice Media is giving both of those fraught endeavors a crack.

InQueensland has been developed by Solstice Media, the same publisher that set up the South Australia’s InDaily a decade ago and uses a similar format — a free newsletter to subscribers at roughly midday. It is chaired by Private Media supremo Eric Beecher. (Crikey is part of Private Media.)

Inaugural publishing editor Peter Atkinson is a veteran of News Corp, APN regional media and AAP. He told Crikey that InQueensland was aiming for a “more sophisticated audience” in Queensland, poorly served by the “clickbait, and fairly fluffy content that has become far too common in mainstream media here”.

“Public interest journalism has drifted a bit in Queensland in the last few years,” Atkinson said. “There’s been a real lack of diversity, possibly more so than any other state, and that lack of diversity has really affected the status of independent journalism in the state.”

The reporting team boasts some big names. Former Courier-Mail national affairs editor Dennis Atkins (who obviously did his best work at Crikey) and former health editor for The Australian Sean Parnell provide the political coverage.

They also have business journalists John McCarthy and Robert MacDonald and arts coverage from Daniel Johnson and Brett Debritz. It will further feature regular opinion from Christine Jackman, regional coverage from Nicole Bond and Brad Cooper and sports coverage from Michael Blucher.

We’ve been promised Atkins has a particularly spicy piece leading the first edition, out later today.