Corby Magazine’s
Birthday
We look back on the first year of Corby Magazine, the events, the magazines, the mistakes, the impact that we’ve made and what the plans are for the future of the magazine.
T
his issue of Corby Magazine is a very special one for everyone on the magazine team as it’s our first birthday issue!
It’s was a year ago when Corby Magazine’s founders Sean Spooner and Louis Porter sat down and started looking for an idea for something to do in their spare time, just weeks later issue one rolled off the press with 200 copes. Over the past year there have been both highs and lows, some of which have been kept under the radar, but in this special Corby Magazine report we show all on our past year of making the magazine. The first issue started with 12 pages and just 200 copies. It was produced over just two weeks during a school holiday. The idea was there with a business plan in place, however the magazine itself was not great! It was designed as ‘JPG’ files, which in human terms means that once you’ve typed something and hit enter, you can’t change it! This is one of the reasons why issue one had so many mistakes, but never the less for something which took a matter of hours to produce and sell all of the advertising space for, it was an
and something to set the rest of the issues on. Although not a lot has come from issue one, we still have the same front cover layout as the original used on the first ever copy. Between issue one and two was the Corby highland gathering, where Corby Magazine had a ‘guess how many balloons are in the car’ game to raise funds. We had quite a few prizes from the business of Corby who were great supporting us, but because of the fact that we were new, and young the people just did not play! Despite that we achieved what we set out to do, which was to get the name of Corby Magazine out there, and it seemed to work! Also during the production of issue two we had an interview of the then brand-new MP, Louise Bagshawe. We sat down with Louise during her first surgery open to the public in Asda where she explained her main aims for Corby and East Northants over the next few years and how she aimed to achieve them for the people of Corby. Louise Bagshawe was quoted in
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issue two saying: “Corby Magazine is a great initiative by young Corby creators. Everyone in our town ought to be supporting it, it’s independent, challenging, imagine and full of Corby Pride.” Another interview which took place for issue two was with Corby’s very own teenage internet marketing millionaire, Christian Owens, who later became the magazine’s first subscriber signing up just two hours after subscription options went live on www.corbymagazine.com. At the time Christian was working on a site which he launched in 2009 named Branchr. It was an online affiliate networking site, making money from advertising for such clients as MySpace and William Hill. Christian is now the editor of his very own online tech website, named Gizable.