The Coronavirus has changed our world forever and like so many others, my plans have been turned upside down too. Any hopes for a satisfying retirement seem to have been completely blown away.

In one respect I’m glad, you see I’ve been sitting on my hands for quite some time now, waiting and hoping circumstances would enable me to move on, that simply hasn’t happened and living that way has been very frustrating indeed. So, not to dwell on that, I’ve decided to do an about face and put any notion of retirement in the background, for a while longer at least, and do something that I’ve felt Orange needed for a long time – produce a decent local newspaper. Thanks to Coronavirus, that’s about to happen.

Very soon, a new free and local newspaper will hit the streets in Orange, one that I hope will turn the notion that local newspapers are dying or dead on its head. I’ve never believed that and will continue to do so, until I prove my thinking is wrong, our new local Newswatch publication will do just that one way or the other.

Newspapers across the world have gone from pillars of greatness to undignified rubble and in my view, it’s been their own fault. I realise that’s an enormous claim to make, especially by a little nobody publisher in Orange NSW Australia, but I stand by it. I’m a business person, a marketer and a consumer and like everybody else, if you want my business or my loyalty, you have to offer me something that will make my life better in some way, and at a price that I feel is giving me value for money. Newspapers across the world stopped doing that a long time ago and most have gone downhill since. Sure they blame social media for most of their problems, but there’s a lot more to it than just that. For all of time, businesses have had to contend with new competitors or other threats to their profitability and in most cases they make changes or improvements to their own business to maintain their market share, customers if you prefer, no good business owner just throws their hands up in the air and says “we’ll all be ruined!” That’s exactly what it seems to me they did. They blamed everyone and everything, but the one thing they needed to do, they didn’t, they didn’t work the problem adequately enough and they didn’t move with the times. It really is that simple.

I’m backing myself with Newswatch. I believe having a free local weekly newspaper in a community like Orange, that’s well read and highly respected, is still possible. We’ll soon find out. The first edition of Orange City Life Newswatch will come out soon. I hope you like it!