Daily Mercury journalists have proven to the world that community stories still matter
Our news brand is community and that is why our My Town campaign was named in INMA’s Global Media Awards in New York.
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Armed with only a notebook and camera, Daily Mercury journalists have proven to the world that community stories still matter.
The voice they give to the Mackay region has been recognised on the global stage.
It proves your stories – the tales of Betty and John down the street celebrating their milestone – can reverberate and strike a chord in the largest media think-tank in the world.
The Mercury’s My Town series placed second to an entry from India, home to a fifth of the world’s population.
We believe coming runner-up in the 2021 Global Media Awards reinforces we are on the right track with our approach in Mackay.
We rubbed shoulders with news publications in Sweden, India and Austria so finishing second for Best Use of an Event to Build a News Brand still feels like a win to us.
It’s an industry award with a confusing title but at its core is you, the readers.
It’s your stories that are the essence of the Daily Mercury and they are now award-winning.
The support you have given us impressed the International News Media Association judges picked to highlight the best-of-the-best worldwide.
Our news brand is community and that is why My Town works.
It follows our win at the 2021 Queensland Country Press Association Awards in Brisbane last week where My Town won Best Promotion.
My Town. I first heard those words as a phrase when I was in Grade 6.
Fosseys, a budget department store that disappeared after a merger with Target in Australia, had a writing competition called My Town I Like It.
My home town of Glengarry, which has now blossomed to more than 1000 residents, had just a few hundred when I was growing up there in the 1980s.
I submitted a piece, opening with the tale of Mrs Beanham who used to pick up rubbish on her walk around town.
She would always chat to people who walked past and I remember thinking about the pride she must have for our community to collect and dispose of the trash others carelessly left behind.
That little ditty won me a $50 Fosseys voucher – high stakes for a youngster in the 80s.
It also helped earn me a place at a weekend camp with other avid writers later that same year.
Storytelling is the main reason I got into journalism.
Sharing someone’s story, usually an intricate tapestry of light and dark moments, is a privilege and an honour.
Being invited into one’s home, their life, brings with it a responsibility to record their tale in perpetuity.
My sense of community, linked with storytelling, was a passion from an early age.
But as the editor of a newspaper servicing a large regional area, I decided we were too Mackay city focused.
I wanted to tell more stories from our smaller towns.
The achievement and the success of our young and old.
Tales from Rob and Jenny down the street.
The hard times and the resilience that comes from them.
That’s why we hatched a plan to get out into as many towns in our region as we could on a rotating basis, to find out what’s happening outside our usual neck of the woods.
My Town was born. Today, June 8, we are heading up to Finch Hatton to hang out with the locals there.
The concept has since evolved to include councillors at each My Town visit after Mackay Regional Council realised the value of extending its reach into our outer towns with us too.
It has given us the chance to tell incredible stories we might not otherwise have been able to, such as the pioneering Mackay family that counts the late William the Conqueror and Princess Diana as distant relatives.
And how the green ants in the United Kingdom version of I’m a Celebrity Get Me Out of Here were shipped from the Mackay region.
But we were also able to cover important issues we might have missed such as Eton’s headache over miner’s long-term parking in its main street, subdivision issues in Habana and a milestone reflection on a tragic Kuttabul house fire.
Importantly, it has also enabled us to make better contacts with people out of the main city areas.
We want people to take pride in where they live.
I’m a country girl at heart and I love helping champion the needs, issues and milestones of the community and region I live in.
The Daily Mercury’s sport livestreaming initiative with the Courier Mail, which started with Schoolboys footy and became even more important with Covid restrictions last year, also placed third in the Global Media Awards.
Our latest livestreaming of the Aaron Payne Cup that will pit St Patrick’s College against Mackay State High at 5.30pm Tuesday, will be live on our site.
And if you miss the action, you can catch the replay, right here.
Originally published as Daily Mercury journalists have proven to the world that community stories still matter
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