When Joan and I started on the long (and winding) road to produce iNews Cayman we never imagined it would be so successful in such a short time. We started our very first publication on Monday May 2nd 2011. We had started formulating our plans for the publication back in October 2010. At that time producing a print edition was not on the drawing board. Our publication was designed to fit on the iPad (and other tablets) and was going to be available only on the Internet. The Internet is the future and the print format is a relic of the past. Or so we thought.

Acting upon advisement and market research we decided to change our plans. The Cayman Islands is unique and for us to attract a share of the advertising market, especially at first, we began to see the necessity of producing a print edition as a secondary publication. The Internet edition, though, was to be the main thrust and arrow head of iNews. That’s why it is called iNews, i.e. Internet News. It is where we can keep our readership up to date with news within minutes as we receive it. Our website is so designed that we can even beam video and our readers can place their own comments on all our stories. We knew that people also like to have something in their hand they can read so we also placed a pdf edition on our website set out exactly like a magazine. This could be read on a computer, or the iPad just like reading a book on Amazon’s ‘Kindle’, and, of course, is available to download and to print it off yourself.

As we have a pdf edition on our website we decided to print an exact replica of it so the newspaper edition of iNews was born and we, after staying up well into the early hours of the following morning got it out to the public on Monday May 2nd to coincide exactly with the Internet edition. We, of course, had to purchase a printer as I didn’t want to go down the road of printing it overseas. To print 1,500 copies a day, five days a week with 24 pages is a lot of print. Most digital printers are not designed to take such a load and an offset printer was out of the question. The printer we got was big and could just about do the demand but it was black and white. The online pdf looked lovely in full colour and our advertisers thought so too and they wanted our newspaper to be the same. So we did it and of course our printing costs now being mainly in colour soared as well.

However, it was only anticipated to produce a print edition for about six months and gradually phase it out. We have been shocked to find that our print readership has grown in line with out Internet readership. Our news sellers, the stores and gas stations have asked us to print more copies. To do this we have to get different printers and we decided as we are approaching our one year anniversary to re-launch iNews as a bigger and better publication. So on May 2nd this year we will be printing more newspapers with every page in it in glorious colour. Every advertisement will be in colour, too.

To get ready for this re-launch we will have to temporarily suspend our own print edition so you will unfortunately not be able to purchase it at your favourite store for the next few weeks only. We apologise for this but you will be able to view it online and print it off yourself as normal. Our success has been a burden, too but we are not complaining. It shows how a small business with the right plan can succeed in a recession.

Please feel free to make comments on our website. We want to hear from you.

Joan and I thank you.