Welcome to an audio-led edition of Unmade. After this week’s news that Solstice Media is buying Australian Traveller Media, we talk to founder Paul Hamra about the 20-year run up to the company’s growth spurt.

We’ve announced the schedule for this year’s Compass series. Our panel-in-the-pub end-of-year tour kicks off in Sydney on November 3 and concludes in Hobart a fortnight later. Reflecting on 2025 and projecting into 2026, please hold the date for your city:

* 3rd November – Compass Sydney

* 5th November – Compass Brisbane

* 10th November – Compass Adelaide

* 11th November – Compass Perth

* 17th November – Compass Melbourne

* 18th November – Compass Hobart

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‘If they were as concerned about the media as they say they are something would have happened by now’

To the outsider, Solstice Media’s national expansion may look like a sudden development. Last year, Solstice took ownership of The New Daily. This month it took control of Schwartz Media’s 7am podcast. And this week Solstice took a majority stake in Australian Traveller Media.

In truth, the expansion of Solstice - which now has 87 staff - has been more organic. Solstice started life as the publisher of South Australian newspaper The Independent Weekly, before taking on News Corp in Adelaide with InDaily.

Solstice’s national footprint grew when it was hired by some of Australia’s industry super funds to launch the New Daily more than a decade ago, and recently bought the masthead from the funds.

In the wide ranging conversation, Hamra discusses his shareholder base of impact investors, and tries to avoid answering how much he paid for Australian Traveller. He explains: “The reason why we liked Australian Traveller is because of the cultural fit, that we were like-minded in terms of our attitude towards publishing, our attitudes towards independence and quality.”

The intention for the company’s lifestyle publications is to help fund its journalism: “If you look over history, you'll see that in any media outlet, it's not the news that funds the business. It's actually other verticals that have funded the business.“

Hamra is also refreshingly honest about the post-rationalisation many publishers go through when they build their businesses. “We end up growing a little bit like Topsy until we fall into a strategy. And that's kind of what's happened to us. We actually had an audience and we bolted things onto that audience over time. And then 15, 16 years down the track, you go, oh, hang on… all of a sudden we've got this fabulous audience and we've actually got a strategy.”

Solstice had been a beneficiary of Facebook funding, and had to make redundancies when it dried up. Like all publishers, Hamra also has a view on the unavoidable need to do business with platforms like Google, and a more sceptical view on whether the government really wants to help Australia’s media owners:

“They sound desperate to help, but the reality is we know they're not because they would have done something by now. If they were as concerned about the media as they say they are, something would have happened by now.

More from Mumbrella…

* Clock ticking for loss-making Aspermont

* Union boss slams News Corp’s use of AI in newsrooms

* On the road again: Compass event series dates announced

* Opinion: Marketing measurement is having a moment, but can it deliver?

* ‘Callous and punitive’: Rosie Waterland launches own podcast network after battle with SCA

* Dr Mumbo: Is Youtube social media? Just Google it

* Google cancels Parliament House party after Youtube ban

* Christian O’Connell’s national move ‘to begin in Sydney’

Today’s podcast was edited by Abe’s Audio. We’ll be back with more soon.

Have a great day

Toodlepip…

Tim Burrowes

Publisher - Unmade + Mumbrella

[email protected]

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