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The Morning’s maiden anniversary  

24 Jan 2022

Overcoming many a challenge in a year that was immensely challenging to the country, The Morning marks its one-year anniversary today (25). A year ago, i.e. on 25 January 2021, The Morning was officially launched as the newest addition to the country’s English newspapers family, with a vision to provide for readers something more than what other newspapers report. However, all this began in challenging circumstances, with limited resources. The Morning has one of the youngest, smallest, and newest editorial teams, and although it has been challenging to a certain extent during the past year, it was also one of the sources of our strengths that enabled us to look at what was happening in the country with a fresh perspective. Most importantly, that team has contributed to strengthen The Morning’s endeavours to maintain the quality, timeliness, and constructiveness of the reporting, to which our readers bear witness.  When it comes to The Morning’s reporting, we could say with confidence that from the inception, we have always tried to provide unbiased, factually accurate, and timely news, and the feedback we have received from our readers since the first few months of the launch of The Morning was the main source of strength we had. For a one-year-old newspaper, The Morning has been able to reach out to almost all levels of the society and thereby shed light on a plethora of underreported social and economic concerns. The main opinions we give prominence to are the opinions of those seeking positive change in the country as far as sociopolitical, economic, and human rights-related matters are concerned, and sticking to providing information that is of concern to the public is a priority. We have also reached the people by being a voice for them, by allocating a considerable amount of space for the people’s opinions that go unheard in the mainstream media. The biggest challenge The Morning faced as a newly launched national newspaper was the unfavourable circumstances under which it was launched and grew. Last year, Sri Lanka saw the worst of the Covid-19 waves that emerged so far in the country, and the closure of newspaper stands and curfews and travel restrictions affected us as much as it affected other national newspapers. However, it would not be an overstatement to say that it was more challenging to us than most established newspapers, as we had just begun our work and were yet to gain some sort of stability as a newspaper. Even though established newspapers had to go digital from print, which they were doing even before the pandemic got worse and therefore had no problem with, The Morning had to start digital, and then gradually enter the print newspaper sector. We cannot also forget the fact that news reporting was an arduous task last year, compared to the previous few years, due to the rapidly changing and uncertain circumstances in the political arena which made news-gathering from government and public sector sources all the more difficult. The Morning is hopeful that this year, it will further reach what it wants to achieve, while continuing to reach more readers that appreciate quality over quantity, truth over rumours, and the interests of the public over political interests. What is more, diversifying what we report at present is another goal we seek to achieve, and in the coming year, we will attempt our best to strengthen the identity we have created, by continuing to do what we do with more dedication and innovation. Even though The Morning was launched in an unfavourable time to launch a national newspaper, the confidence we had and the trust our readers kept in us kept us going, and now, we are more confident and hopeful about what we can achieve this year with the readers that have gathered around us. Moving forward, we will continue to stick to our motto, i.e. we do not talk cock, only facts.


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