This e-newsletter – The Buzz â€“ was born of necessity in the first week of April a year ago. The Government had banned magazine publishing as a health hazard. And the ban itself turned out to be a health hazard … for magazines! A number of venerated magazines died; some are reviving in altered ownership and form.

As it turned out, BayBuzz had to skip one issue (May/June) and used the ‘break’ to accelerate its online journalism plans. 

For one year now, we’ve published weekly editions of The Buzz, our online e-newsbrief on HB’s issues and happenings. So, today you’re reading edition #53, but who’s counting?!

We’ve graduated from published six times a year to publishing most days, and wrapping that up as our weekly e-magazine. Quite an editorial transformation!

It‘s been interesting to see the flow of ‘Top 20’ reads across the last 52 weeks of e-newsletters. Our ‘best seller’ ever – Greg Hart’s inspiring The Family Farm in 2030 â€“ appeared the second week of April and clearly struck some nerves, accumulating nearly 6,000 reads. 

At the beginning, heaps of Covid-related stories … remember Tale of the Ruby Princess or Dr Jeff Green’s account of being stranded on a Covid-infected Antarctic cruise ship?

As the lockdown ended and immediate health fears subsided, our ‘Top 20’ gradually became more balanced, but unpredictable in terms of what captured the most attention. Stories about local recovery dominated for a bit – from online shopping to individual businesses innovating and climbing back.

Then ‘new normal’ stories as people got back into their routines and routine worries – trash collection rules, bus fares, smoke pollution.

And then the unrelenting ‘heavy duty’ policy issues, which never disappeared from the chart, began to re-surface and drive readership – climate, water concerns of every sort, council politics and stuff-ups, biodiversity, longer-term business challenges … and of course NZ and US election-related stories.

As we swung into enjoying the summer, lots of lighter stories about events, the arts, food, lifestyle.

So now, having spent most of April 2020 in lockdown, here we are about a year later focused on trans-Tasman and Pacific bubbles as opposed to personal and family ones.

Thanks for sticking with BayBuzz – in print and online – over this extraordinary period.

We’ve been trying to generate heaps more insightful, intelligent, useful (and occasionally entertaining) content for you, spreading ourselves quite thin in the process. But we hope our editorial quality has been maintained. Certainly our commitment hasn’t wavered.

As we start a second year of continuing online expansion, we’d welcome your suggestions on how we can do better … serve you better. More of what? Less of what? Just comment below.

And of course, we can always use additional financial support for our oily-rag operation. Quality local content costs money! If you feel the urge to help, go here.

Thanks for being a part of BayBuzz.

Share



Leave a comment

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *