Adelaide company Solstice Media to receive $400,000 to write positive articles about business in SA NEWSPAPER company Solstice Media will be given almost $400,000 of taxpayer money each year by the State Government to pay journalists to write "positive" articles about business opportunities in the state. Brand SA chief executive Karen Raffen said the initial $500,000 outlay for setup costs would be followed by a $390,000 contract each year. Solstice Media operates the online news site InDaily, and will be contracted to develop a small "content creation team." Ms Raffen denied there was any connection between the looming State election and the creating of the good news site. "It was a pre-existing strategy the Economic Development Board had looked at and we then took over managing the brand and it was part of a strategy they wanted us to continue with because they had it in the planning for a couple of years," she said. My understanding is this was first put to the government by InDaily and Solstice Media. Solstice are contracting to do the project for us so they will physically get the cheque, but they will pay the money a company to set up the site and staff (journalists) will be contracted to Solstice. There has been no public announcement of the deal, but Ms Raffen said a launch of the funding and specialist new website would be made at Brand SA's Christmas drinks on Tuesday night. She said money for the new venture would be made from the existing State Government funding which is $1.5 million and no decision had yet been made on how many journalists to employ or whether a photographer was needed. A small team will sit within our office and Solstice Media will help us put it together, and Paul Hamra (Solstice Media) will play a bit of an overseeing editorial role to make sure the stories still have some integrity in terms of what we are delivering on. But the whole idea is that when the content it created it is available for all media to use," she said. There may be a great story you guys (The Advertiser) want to pick up on or it might be too fluffy and you will go 'there is no investigative stuff in it' so you won't touch it. My really big fear out of all of this was that I did not want to compete with the local media. Ms Raffen said the website would engineer the articles to be picked up by people using the search engine Google, for example with the search term "medical research." Solstice Media general manager Paul Hamra said Brand SA would oversee the site and that journalistic integrity would be maintained. "It will be independent journalism and there will be an editorial charter to ensure there is independence," he said He said Solstice was yet to determine how many new journalists it would hire.