Editorial / Thirty years on: Shetland News says thank you to those early pioneers
IT IS perhaps not an anniversary at the forefront of most people’s minds, yet for us here at Shetland News it is worth marking in a small way, nevertheless.
It was 30 years yesterday (23 November 1995) that the online version of Shetland News first popped up on a relatively new piece of infrastructure that has since revolutionised our lives: the internet.
It is thanks to a few local guys with a clear vision of the future – Graeme Storey, Jonathan Wills, Ghufar Razaq and a few others who were initially involved – that Shetland News made a very early appearance as an online news service.
This first attempt to turn online news into a viable business failed for reasons well published at the time (just Google Shetland News vs Shetland Times and scroll past the AI stuff…).
It was the start of a new era that would eventually turn the traditional way of news publishing upside down.
Thanks to the foresight of those early entrepreneurs, Shetland News was there right at the beginning.
Then in 2003 Pete Bevington and Hans J Marter made a second attempt, successful this time after a wobbly start, and thus Shetland News does today what its pioneers had envisaged all those years ago. It is time to say thank you.
Yet the local media landscape continues to change, and it is therefore necessary from time to time to state where one stands and what the principles of our reporting are.
Outside of Ian Anderson’s SIBC radio station, Shetland News is now the only locally owned news service in the isles.
Thanks to the continued support from the local business community and the many readers who voluntarily support us with small donations, we are one of very few online news services in the UK and across the world able to operate without a paywall or any other restrictions.
The bespoke www.shetnews.co.uk website is also free of annoying pop-ups and irrelevant clickbait.
We endeavour to produce quality rather than quantity, stories are clearly laid out and are not obstructed by advertising, and decisions on our news output are jointly taken by our team of local journalists.
We have come a long way since those heady days in 1995. It hasn’t been plain sailing all the time, most definitely not, yet it is the right moment to express gratitude to those who were mad enough to start it all.
Finally, if you like what we do and haven’t signed up as a supporter of Shetland News yet, here is another chance to do so via this link: https://account.shetnews.co.uk/register/
For those interested in a deep dive of Shetland News’ early days, here is a link to chapter 14 of Jonathan Wills’ 2021 memoirs Reporter on the Rocks.
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