A decade of Regional News _{by Madelaine Empson}

This January is our birthday – the big 1-0. It doesn’t feel like we’ve been here a decade, but from this photo, it sure looks like it. Baby Maddi down there on the right, who jumped on board with Regional News to ‘help out’ as Girl Friday back in January 2015, could never have imagined what was to come. I’m not sure any of us could.

Looking around the office today, I see staff here that have been with us since the very beginning and others who came on board the following year. For such a small team, this feels like a testament to the fact that we value each other and what we make together. We don’t want to be presumptuous, but the fact that the paper has been going for 10 years suggests that maybe you value it too! We wouldn’t be here without our readers and the people who have supported us over the years, so we wanted to take this opportunity to thank you all.

It's always eye-opening looking back on how far you’ve come. Regional News started out at 20 pages (check out our very first cover in the pic) and quickly found out that we’d filled a gap in the market for a free arts and entertainment, lifestyle and leisure newspaper in Wellington. The warm welcome we received enabled us to double in size – both in page and staff numbers – and to move offices in our seventh year to accommodate our growing team. We now sit at a comfy 40 pages each fortnight and put out a biannual travel magazine, too. In fact, we just celebrated our 20^th edition of Destinationz.  

Big milestones all round, then! But it’s not all smiles here, for a fierce debate rages around the office. Perhaps you can help settle it. Should our 10^th birthday party be dinosaur or Spider-Man themed?