Happy 21st to us!

Very late in the night on 24 October 1994, there was a mad dash to the printers at Marrickville, NSW as months of planning and weeks of late nights came to a conclusion. The first edition of Indian Link newspaper rolled off the presses a few hours later, a 24-page black-and-white edition with a print run of 1,200. Yes, there were a multitude of emotions – elation at seeing a cherished dream realised, self-admonishment for the errors, and oh yes, the trepidation that in less than 20 days we’d have to repeat the process with new content and fresh ideas. More importantly, the printer’s bill had to be paid and the advertisers still had to settle their accounts.
Now, 22 years on, the same feelings still surface each time a new edition is couriered to our office. But stronger in recent years, is a sense of obligation to our community to deliver good quality and well-planned news and information. Not to take the easy way out by merely filling in the pages, but putting in the hard yards of conceptualising our stories, sourcing the information, working on the content, and presenting the information with a balanced perspective. We believe we owe it to our readers.
Times have changed since 1994 and so have the channels through which Indian Link links up with the community. Being flexible enough to adopt the innovations which market disruptions have brought to the world of media and information.  Our print option is now accompanied and further substantiated by radio, website, Facebook, Twitter and YouTube. Across all these channels, we try to tell the Indian Australian story as best as we can. As we keep watch over our growing community, we endeavour to cast regular peeks into what’s happening with our professionals, entrepreneurs, scientists, students, youth, women, kids, seniors, ex-servicemen, artists, LGBTQIs – every section of our community. Indeed, it is our great fortune that when the community has a story to tell, they contact us first. As observers of trends in our community, we have also become the first point of contact for the mainstream media when they have a question that concerns us. What drives us though, is our continued passion to seek out the Indian story in this country.
We enter our 22^nd year with plenty of laurels, not only from the government, but also from the community we serve. Yet, we are happy to admit, we have the very same enthusiasm that characterised that first edition way back in 1994. The prospect of working with the community in as yet unexplored opportunities continues to fill us with excitement. The Indian Australian community is growing by leaps and bounds and we’re rubbing our hands together in anticipation of the new stories that will undoubtedly come out of this evolution.
Here’s looking forward to our next landmark – our 25^th birthday or our 1,000^th edition – neither of which is very far away.
Happy birthday to all in the Indian Link family!