Central West Media announces new region to be included in the Village Voice.
In the wake of announcements by other media outlets, locally owned and operated Central West Media continues its support of the region by focussing on growth and servicing communities with their brand of good, community based news.
Started in 2014 by husband and wife team Kellie and Rich Evans, Central West Media publish the Central West Village voice every fortnight, focussed on community news, events art and culture and what is important communities with a view to keeping a positive narrative alive in the region.
The couple started in Lithgow in 2014, made a move into Bathurst in 2019 and had planned for further expansion prior to COVID. The 2 years of the pandemic forced a reconsideration of the multiple publication strategy, and now a combined fortnightly publication delivered free to communities continues to be a positive move.
The Central West Village Voice will soon be adding additional regions in the coming months, starting with Blayney in September.
“We are very excited about this new opportunity to continue making a difference in as many central west regions as we can,” said co founder Kellie Evans.
“Our ‘light at the end of the tunnel’ policy ensures we always focus on a positive narrative and find stories that lift communities up, it’s our view this is what is needed most in regional areas, people that want bad news can find that easily enough on social media or other news organisations. It doesn’t mean we avoid important things, but we bring facts and options to people and leave them feeling like they can play a role in solving big issues or inform them how they can get further information. Regional communities are pretty switched on and resilient, we don’t think shock news and click bait have any place out here.” said current managing editor and co founder Rich Evans.
The news industry is evolving however the Central West Village Voice is primarily a printed product. This new phase of growth is also going to see an expansion of the online channel, there is a firm commitment however that there will never be a paywall on the website.
“News should be free but it is not free to produce, so we are identifying more evolved business models than paywalls, I’m looking forward to getting back into tech mode a bit more and exploring this to see what we can achieve,” said Rich.
With this new expansion, there will be a slight reshuffling of positions with Kellie now taking on the leadership role while Rich focuses on developing the new digital offering and behind the scenes aspects of the business.
“I am looking forward to this next challenge and taking the wheel for a while so we can build a sustainable business in this region. We have always been great at running a business together but as we grow, we need to build our team and offering,” said Kellie.
The Central West Village Voice will be available in Blayney from 11 September, with a community and business information night scheduled for Friday 30th August at 5:30pm in the Blayney Community Centre. All are welcome to attend.
