The Cairns and surrounds region includes the local governments of Cairns, Cassowary Coast, Douglas, Tablelands and Yarrabah. The largest city in the region, Cairns, is around 1,700km north of Brisbane.

In reviewing the media market in Cairns, we assessed that the coverage footprints of both the Post and Local News incorporated some of the surrounding local government areas. With this in mind, we expanded the assessment to include four further local government areas. This introduced three further local news outlets to the sample: Douglas News Network, Newsport, and Wet Tropic Times.

Mareeba Shire also neighbours Cairns, but we found little evidence of coverage of the Shire: only nine stories across the month, all of which concerned an incident late in March where police shot and killed an Indigenous man, which led to protests. Absent this event, it is unlikely that the Shire would have received coverage at these outlets. Mareeba also has its own local newspapers – the Mareeba Express and Kuranda Paper – neither of which extend into their neighbouring areas.

For these reasons, it was not added to the expanded sample. Six changes have been observed since PIJI began monitoring the region in 2019. In May 2020 News Corp merged three papers –the Atherton Tablelander, Innisfail Advocate and Port Douglas and Mossman Gazette – into the larger Cairns Post. A new independent title, Cairns Local News, opened in September of the same year. In 2021, following changes to affiliation agreements among television broadcasters, WIN ended its existing local news bulletin in Cairns, and Mission Beach News in Cassowary Coast closed at the end of the year.