Two Bits – 4 September 2015

You can see from the branding of today’s Courier that we are about to reach a fantastic milestone. We’re on the brink of the Big 3-0 – 30 years of continuous publishing of your favourite local newspaper.

Rose and I started the North Coast Courier in 1985, producing 7 000 copies of an eight page paper every fortnight. In those days every photo was on film and had to be developed and printed in a darkroom, every word had to be typeset on a cantankerous photo-typesetter – cutting edge at the time, but extremely temperamental – and the whole paper had to be made up by hand.

Email was light years ahead. There weren’t even fax machines, so every advertisement had to be driven to every advertiser from Umhlanga to Mandeni for approval – no approval, no pay.

The pages were made up by sticking all words and photos onto templates with wax and then driven through to the press in Pietermaritzburg. More than once, Rose came back from ‘Maritzburg in her beetle loaded down with bundles of papers, plus our six-month-old daughter in a carrycot on the floor beside her! Then we split the load and distributed the paper from Umdloti to Mandeni.

Wow! What hectic days those were! The Courier became a weekly a couple of years later and, apart from the Christmas break, we have produced a paper every Wednesday, rain or shine, without fail. This paper you are holding is Issue No 1 309 and much water, not to forget blood, sweat, many laughs and a few tears, has flowed under the bridge, but sometimes Issue No 1 feels like yesterday.

The Courier has grown and grown, and added our wildly popular leisure magazine, Get It magazine, and the bi-annual Fast Finder service directory, so today our staff complement is 25. Last year we produced 1 124 pages of Courier and 1 785 000 copies. There were 532 pages and 220 000 copies of Get It magazine. That’s a long way from 16 pages and 14 000 copies a month in the first year.

The company’s initiative to give something back to the community saw the birth of the Orphan Fund. This fundraising channel has helped many thousands of orphaned or vulnerable children get an education. In the next year it will pass the R3 million mark of funds it has raised from local companies and individuals. All that money has been distributed, as well as many thousands of blankets, shoes and meals.

The Fund has also helped channel funds raised by the charity organisations of the district – Rotary and Lions clubs, the Christmas Fair Fund and many others. The major churches are represented on the board and guide decisions on how the money is spent.

In recent years we have been investing heavily in the next big step forward – the Internet and social media. The Courier is still the prime source of news for locals and ex-North Coasters who live far away but still like to keep in touch with their roots. A lot of effort is going into developing the right look and feel of our online media presence, on desktop or mobile platforms.

Rose and I and everyone in the company is proud of our milestone birthday, but we know we did not manage it alone. Hundreds and hundreds of people have contributed over the years, from writing and sending in photos of social and sporting events, letters and story ideas, to taking advertisements that pay for everything to happen.

The delight has been in creating an icon, a living thing, that the North Coast community has used and enjoyed, for their own and other people’s benefit and enjoyment. Some say that papers like the Courier help develop the community, that people identify with the product as much as with the area.

Well and good. And that makes me proud and glad.

Our birthday month isn’t until November, but we’re going to celebrate it with various events and promotions for the rest of the year, starting now. So we’re not there just yet, but 29 and counting!

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Since the subject is newspapers, here are some memorable newspaper headlines from around the world:

Something Went Wrong in Jet Crash, Expert Says (No, really?)

Panda Mating Fails; Veterinarian Takes Over (What a guy!)

Miners Refuse to Work after Death (No-good-for-nothing lazy so-and-so’s!)

Juvenile Court to Try Shooting Defendant (See if that works any better than a fair trial!)

War Dims Hope for Peace (I can see where it might have that effect!)

If Strike Isn’t Settled Quickly, It May Last Awhile (You think?)

Cold Wave Linked to Temperatures (Who would have thought!)

New Study of Obesity Looks for Larger Test Group (Weren’t they fat enough?!)

Kids Make Nutritious Snacks (Taste like chicken?)

Is There a Ring of Debris around Uranus? (Not if I wipe thoroughly!)

Hospitals are Sued by 7 Foot Doctors (Boy, are they tall!)

And the winner is….

Typhoon Rips Through Cemetery; Hundreds Dead