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A decade ago, Marcus Craft and I launched 2508 District News for the Helensburgh postcode. We were new to the area, our daughter had just started preschool and I was looking for ways to avoid returning to newspapers, weekend shifts and long hours. Our first edition in February 2014 featured a talented young surfer from Coalcliff; a pet owner searching for his escaped diamond pythons and consultation on the Stage One Concept Plan for the Grand Pacific Walk. We printed 3500 copies.
“It’s very good,” someone said kindly at the time, “but aren’t you afraid you’re going to run out of stories?”
In fact, the biggest challenge remains fitting all the stories in. Each magazine is like a jigsaw of a million parts. Luckily I like both print and jigsaws.
After 10 years, it is stock-taking time. In 2024, we print 11,000 copies a month, have a website visited by 84,000 people last year, a digital weekend magazine and active social media pages. During the pandemic we were honoured to win Meta funding from the Walkley Foundation to boost our online presence and were recently nominated for an award by our professional body, the Local & Independent News Association (LINA). And our charming toddler is now in year 10 and has recently quit/been fired from her Illawarra Flame paper round, depending on whether you believe a teenager or her mother.
Despite a decade of challenges – including Covid-related paper costs forcing a merger of 2508 and its sister mag 2515 Coast News in January 2022 – the mix of hyper-local stories is as eclectic as ever. In this issue, you’ll find memories of a Thirroul street, a surf club’s centenary celebrations and insights into nuclear power.
As long-time journalists, Marcus and I have worked in London, Cape Town and Sydney on national titles, but we are most proud to have established a model for local community news that is powered by the people.
We couldn’t do it without you.
Thanks to the hard work of everyone from school children to business owners to retirees, this magazine is a direct reflection of our coastal community. It has become a mirror of everyday society, a voice for volunteers, small business, sustainability and the arts. Many articles are written by local residents, not trained journalists but all are trusted experts in their field – be it the
Girl Guides or the Science of the Surf.
This is the magazine the community made.
On the cover this month are some of the many, many people who’ve made it possible, from writers and professional photographers to the letterboxing team who reliably hand deliver the finished product to your letterboxes each month (special mention to the Colemans, Lachlan, Alicia and Olivia, who literally go the extra mile).
We’re thrilled to have given many young people their first jobs (and, in the case of one good saver, enough cash to buy his first iPad).
Representing the letterboxing team on this cover are a boy I remember from Stanwell Park playgroup; the daughters of filmmaker Iris Huizinga (who made our heart-warming series of Community Champions short docos in 2022);
Year 12 student Caitlin and her mum, plus two dedicated helpers from Hillcrest Village (thank you, Junko and Tony). Otford local Linda – who mixed letterboxing and dog walking for years – even brought along her gorgeous Border Collies.
Who we’d like to thank
While hundreds of people have contributed to the magazine over the past 10 years – thank you, everyone! – some outstanding sorts have done it for nearly a decade: Rob Brander, world-renowned surf scientist, aka Dr Rip, sharing beach safety advice locally since issue no. 1; Jenny Donohoe and Jim Powell, leaders at Helensburgh Historical Society; retired teacher Janice Creenaune with her ‘Time to’ series of talented locals; Ian Pepper, voice of the Scarborough Boardriders; architect Ben Wollen, exploring the built environment; Dr Chris Reid, the Australian Museum expert finding time for Beetling About; and snorkelling/diving correspondent Duncan Leadbitter, who pops in to say Hello Fish when the water is clear. Thanks also to our business writers, such as Jo Fahey, who has documented Glenbernie Orchard’s decade of transformation, from fruit farm to award-winning cider maker and agri-tourism operator.
As the publication named after a tree, it's no surprise that local flora is one of our favourite subjects. Thanks to our original gardening expert, Sara Newnham, who also attended the 10th anniversary photo-shoot; Banksia Bushcare’s Kieran Tapsell for sharing a tree a month; Merilyn House of Helensburgh Landcare for being Weed Wise; and congratulations to our website columnist Emma Rooksby, the Environmental Achievement winner at 2024’s City of Wollongong Awards.
We’re grateful to the many community publicists who share their groups’ news each month. Never mind big business or politics, if we’ve learned one thing in 10 years, it’s how much of Australian society is quietly powered by volunteers.
For their invaluable reports from the frontline of local democracy and civic affairs, we take off our hats to TVC secretary Annette Jones, NIRAG secretary Ross Dearden and NF1 convenor Warwick Erwin. Thanks to our excellent board of advisers: SCWC director Sarah Nicholson, lawyer Kathleen Carmody, photographer Mel Russell and journalists Caroline Baum and Brian Kelly.
We have a talented team of freelancers: social media star Kasey Simpson; feature writer Caitlin Sloan; lifestyle writer Amanda De George; foodie Susan Luscombe; arts writer Tilly Kidd. Thanks to graphic designer Rebecca Young (for always making us look good and insisting on including a pic of the editors in this article) and photographer Anthony Warry, who shot this cover, the first one in 2014 and many more in between.
Local news is traditionally a training ground and we’ve had the privilege of helping a few journalism students publish their first stories; well done Zachary Houtenville, welcome Tyneesha Williams.
Many of you will know Marcus, who did most of the reporting legwork in the early years, when the kids were young, had a bad habit of demanding ambulance rides at 3am and the parents’ room at Sutherland Hospital doubled as a mobile office. Today Marcus juggles editing and distribution (which due to an unfailing sense of humour he calls “lifting boxes”) with his work as one of Australia’s top motoring journalists (“testing cars”). He’s still the bedrock of our business.
How we’re celebrating
To mark 10 years in local news, we’re digitising a decade of print stories – look out for uploads of past February editions online this month. Every edition makes history (the State Library uploads it to Trove) and we hope our website becomes a library of local knowledge too.
We’re also researching the history of local news and would like to chat to anyone who has been involved in past incarnations of community papers. Helensburgh and District Historical Society has shared newspapers dating from the late 1960s and – in an age where hundreds of publications have folded around the country – we are keen to hear from those who established such a strong culture of local news that it has survived into the digital age.
Behind every successful small business is an incredible story, so we invite all our advertisers to share their own business histories – whether you’re a start-up with big dreams or a long-standing business with generations of family members serving the community, we’d love to hear from you.
What lies ahead
Our biggest challenges in the next decade are financing and fake news. And you can help with both – simply by supporting our advertisers and backing our reporting.
When I studied journalism at university in South Africa, during the turbulent transition from apartheid to democracy, lecturers told us, ‘There’s this thing called the Internet. It’s coming and it’s going to kill newspapers.’
My first job was at the Daily Dispatch, a newspaper once edited by Donald Woods, the legendary journalist whose books inspired the film Cry Freedom. Yet even in the early 90s, journalism’s slide from respect to distrust had begun.
And here we are today – in a world where a bumper sticker spotted locally proclaims, ‘The Media is the Virus’.
Print may not be dead, but the internet has diminished newspapers. It has made all truths accessible, as well as all lies. Fake news continues to damage civil discourse about critical issues including the Illawarra’s proposed off-shore wind area. Where a news publication’s challenge used to be speaking truth to power, now it’s speaking truth to the public. And trying to be heard above the din.
In our Letters page, we welcome all sorts of views, politely expressed. You may or may not agree with the sentiment in this month’s poem, Ill Wind, submitted by a Thirroul local. But everyone can celebrate the safe democracy that allows us to share it (and the creative form of expression).
In a time of big changes and hard choices, as always, we’ll report the facts, as well as how people feel about them. As founding members of LINA, we’re committed to accuracy, independence and diversity, to being fair and accountable. Watchdog may be a term from another era, but we still have a few good teeth.
Support those who support us
This small family business is entirely funded by advertising. From real estate agents to lawyers, mechanics and plumbers, our clients contribute the ad dollars that allow us to share your stories.
Our advertisers are directly invested in building a strong community and fostering a sense of belonging. By supporting the businesses in these pages, you are supporting us.
Thank you – and here’s to another 10 years!