It's three and a half years since the Morning Advertiser reinvented itself and became a far more relevant newspaper for modern licensees and their suppliers. Thanks to wonderful support from everyone, we've had a great run and the MA has been totally transformed.
But now it's time to take that process a stage further and extend our coverage far deeper into the day-to-day workings of the trade and with your help and feedback, become an even stronger paper.
From today, you'll see a whole range of new features and articles that aim to show licensees how their fellow traders operate and how best practice can be achieved.
Take a look at some of the new aspects we'll be serving up each week: My Pub puts us inside the businesses of six different types of licensees, who'll take their turn to share with us all the ups and downs of the past few months; The Guv'nor is a weekly soapbox for licensees to get things off their chest please do feel free to contribute; Vox Pub is a weekly poll of licensee opinion on whatever's important in their lives; and Talk of the Town is a regular, in-depth look at the pub trade in a major town or city.
Food coverage is also being dramatically extended: our monthly title PubChef now goes to all our readers; and each week in the MA, we'll be devoting two pages to this vital subject.
And, just as importantly, we'll be making it easier for you to feed back to us your views on the things that really matter to you: our e-mail addresses and phone numbers are there to be used.
Please do let us know what you feel. Regularly. Especially if you think we've missed the point. Put us right!
As we said back in 2000, unless ordinary licensees have a strong voice, the trade will change in ways that are not necessarily in their best interests.
By strengthening the Morning Advertiser, we strengthen the voice of the licensee. And that's got to be good for us all.