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Caerphilly Observer is celebrating ten years as a newspaper this month.
Our latest edition, out now, is the 250th to be published – and what a journey it’s been to get here.
Originally launched by myself as a website on July 28, 2009, our independently-owned title successfully launched a fortnightly print edition in May 2013 because of reader demand.
We received funding to help produce the first four editions from Caerphilly County Borough Council’s Caerffili Cwm a Mynydd Rural Development Programme Partnership.
The grant was part-funded through the European Agricultural Fund for Rural Development and the Welsh Government.
Today, the newspaper maintains its print circulation of 10,000 and an online readership of 85,000 monthly visitors.
The circumstances surrounding our leap into newsprint were a little accidental if truth be told.
I remember meeting Caerffili Cwm a Mynydd’s Phil Loveless at the start of 2013 for a chat to find out what business grants were available to potentially start a print edition.
By the end of the meeting I had agreed to apply and the rest is history. Loads of people wrote us off in the beginning – even the person who deals with our printing admitted to thinking we wouldn’t last long.
There have been plenty of challenges along the way – not least my own professional development from humble local reporter to editor and publisher.
I was recently invited to speak at a conference where I joked I was also Caerphilly Observer’s head of finance, head of HR, and its logistics director.
The latter tongue-in-cheek title means I often deliver the papers to almost 100 shops, garages, post offices, and other outlets every fortnight. In fact, this latest edition was distributed by me.
A few years ago we had a great video produced showing me on my round.
It’s not easy putting a newspaper out every fortnight and making sure we’re across all the news that’s happening in our area on a daily basis for our website.
But I am a very lucky person in that I have an amazing team who all work really hard. And I am also fortunate in that Caerphilly Observer serves an audience that clearly cares about local issues.
Readers often tell us what a great job we do – but you’re also not shy in telling us when we’re wrong and we need to do better.
Believe me, I always value the latter. We are always striving for improvement.
During our ten years in print, our journalism has been recognised with six Wales Media Awards – including Scoop of the Year in 2015 and Website of the Year in 2020.
The 2020 awards were actually given out in 2021 because of the pandemic.
This was undoubtedly the one thing in our history which had the biggest impact.
Our business model was turned upside down (why would local businesses advertise if they were closed?). In the immediate weeks after lockdown, it was touch and go whether we could continue.
With uncertainty surrounding us, I decided to keep going until the money ran out. I took a pay cut and off we went.
In many ways that was a turning point for us. I hadn’t realised it until then, but I had become a bit conservative with Caerphilly Observer’s development. Things were working up until that point – why change something that’s working? Only now, they weren’t.
The pandemic challenged us to keep reporting on what was happening, but also to change what we did. We really started to focus on what readers wanted and we turned to you for help with our membership scheme.
Readers can now support us from just £3 a month to directly fund our service.
This renewed focus gave us the confidence to successfully bid for a BBC contract to employ our Local Democracy Reporter Rhiannon James. We have also successfully applied for several grants to employ even more journalists – such as Emily Janes, who looks after the north of the borough, and Tom Hicks, who is currently studying at Cardiff University while working for us part-time.
Together with my colleagues Joanne Burgess, Rhys Williams, and our print proof-reader Barry Withers, we are now stronger than ever, but we are not resting on our laurels.
The local news industry is in a perilous state. Years of cutbacks brought about by changing business models mean there is a long way to go to rebuilding, and redefining, local news services.
Despite celebrating our tenth anniversary in print this month, we are not the first publication to bear the title Caerphilly Observer.
The Bargoed and Caerphilly Observer was first published in 1904 by Rhymney printer George Jenkin Jacobs.
My father-in-law, a Welsh history buff, discovered the online archive of the papers on the National Library of Wales website (I should note that I had no previous knowledge of this when I chose the name Caerphilly Observer). A bit of investigation of this link into the past led me to a book entitled A History of Printing and Printers in Monmouthshire by Ifano Jones.
The book, published in 1925, details the independent publishers plying their trade in South Wales a century ago.
It gives the impression of a vibrant sector with a variety of titles covering their respective patches.
Together with George Jenkin Jacobs’ Caerphilly Observer, we also have David Davies’ The Tredegar Guardian, Henry Webber’s Cardiff and Merthyr Guardian, and a host of others.
Reading the fragile book, it is hard not to draw parallels with today’s efforts by other independent titles like ours.
An industry colleague recently told me we were like those early pioneering publishers – reshaping local news.
But like them, we are only going to do it successfully with the support from our local community – be it members directly contributing funds, or via local businesses and others who support what we do through advertising.
Thank you for all of your support over the past decade and beyond, and thank you to our long-term advertisers for sticking with us, as well as all of the outlets that stock our newspaper.
We couldn’t do it without you.
Support quality, independent, local journalism…that matters
From just £1 a month you can help fund our work – and use our website without adverts.
Become a member today