Good morning and welcome to the first edition of the Cootamundra Times.
The Cootamundra Times has commenced operations in the Coota area.
The Times is currently being run by a group of passionate local people with the assistance of staff at the Twin Town Times in Harden-Murrumburrah. We hope that we will continue to add to our supporter base and grow our business and your paper. We have been pleasantly surprised by the enthusiasm thus far and will continue to build our relationships with all organisations in the area. A page titled Coota News had been running for a number of years on Facebook but had sat idle until last week. With last week’s news that Coota would not have a print product available for residents and readers and with the current media climate looking cloudy under Covid-19 restrictions, the decision was made on Sunday, to push the button on providing Coota with a print product, as soon as possible. That has been able to be achieved within 4 days. The business name Cootamundra Times was registered on Monday and a website is currently under construction, which we hope will be operational within 7 days, which is this Sunday April 26.
The Cootamundra Times will be what the Coota people want it to be. All newspapers require community contributions and support, they also require the community to both purchase that product being the newspaper and advertise in it. Our printing costs are higher than the 2 major players in Newscorp and ACM in that we use 3rd party printers. This is unavoidable, yet we are printing while others have ceased printing a number of mastheads.
We set the goal of providing 12 pages this week and we have achieved that, but there are many possibilities and we are excited about them. They include having a larger Coota section in the Times product, a stand alone product in the future and the chance to print it right here in Coota. We want to add to our small staff of writers who have come on board this week. Anything is possible. At the moment we have bitten off what we could chew this week.
The Times will be out each week in conjunction with the Twin Town Times for now and will cost $2. We hope that you can find $2 each week to ensure its continued success. We are different in that we will not have a paywall on our website. This means that sometimes you will see the same stories in both mediums. We do this so that all of the community can be up to date each week. There are those who have access to the web, those to print and those to both. It is a diverse community.
If you have any contributed material that is typed or hand written please drop it off to the Outback Bakery, we will have a special box to receive it each week. If you have email access we would love to receive information via this medium. You can email tips, leads, ideas, stories and photographs. If you are a publicity officer for a local organisation and have previously been ignored by other media companies, that will end today. Please make contact with us. If you are a business and want to discuss fair-dinkum cost effective advertising, including some great packages please make contact, your adverts will appear in print and online. We love to tell your stories and we love to watch businesses grow alongside ours. Our email is currently editorial@twintowntimes.com.au that will change in the future to a Cootamundra Times email.
Our phone number is 0413 763 216.
Lets make this work together!
Cootamundra Times staff.