Today, MyCity Logan celebrates its first birthday – 12 months and and 52 editions ago we embarked on phase 1 of our short journey to date.
It was the middle of a pandemic, an economic recession had just been announced, and there was a belief that print journalism was a declining industry.
What we saw was something quite different. We saw that a corporate giant had decided to leave about 270 communities without a quality local newspaper. One of those was Logan.
Someone needed to step up, so we set about compiling a quality team who could fill a substantial void.
We knew that we’d have to change things up – review the business model. We set up a virtual newsroom, stripped back the layers of management, and reviewed the delivery process.
Our mission was quite simple. We wanted to meet consumer demand as outlined in national surveys, showing people wanted a curated “newspaper-like” product which gave them regular insights into their neighbourhoods.
That meant creating a newspaper that was accessible to everyone. It also meant creating a product that was free to everyone.
We did that by printing 10,000 copies of our newspaper, and delivering those copies to high traffic areas – predominantly where people do their shopping, whether it be large shopping centres, or small villages.
We then produced a digital version of the same newspaper – a flipbook which people could scan through on their computers. Again, entirely free to those who want it.
We could have tried to source data by asking for people’s name, age, address and other details. But we didn’t. To the displeasure of marketing experts, we felt that was intrusive and wasn’t aligned with our primary mission – to give people back their newspaper.
We built from the ground up, and we’re still adding to our resources.
We’d like to thank those who’ve supported us, discovered us, and engaged with us.
We look forward to many more years of servicing our proud community.
