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Daily runs birthday masthead to mark 20 years since website’s launch

A regional daily produced a special masthead to mark 20 years since it launched its website.

The Mail, based in Barrow-in-Furness, celebrated the anniversary with a special birthday-themed masthead featuring a candle, balloons and confetti.

The masthead appeared on The Mail’s site and the newspaper, and was accompanied by a feature about the website’s launch.

The feature was written by long-serving reporter Ellis Butcher, who recalled both the arrival of the internet in the paper’s newsroom in 1995 and the launch of the site four years later.

Mail 20

Wrote Ellis: “Hosting a website did not immediately enter the thinking, because the internet did not have the mass usage or availability that we see today where many are connected wherever they are.

“Unlike now, where every reporter has multiple online access via desktops, laptops and mobile phones, back then the editorial floor had just a single desktop computer with ‘the internet on it’.

“Such was its mystique, it was even housed in its own small private office with a desk and chair. If you wanted a ‘go’ on it, and very few did in those early days, you had to ask permission from IT.

“It never worked quickly enough when you were on deadline. It was also noisy in those early days – hence a little office of its own.”

Ellis went on to examine the impact other “new technology” had had on the Mail’s operations.

He added: “Just a single email address existed back in the mid-1990s but it was rarely used as the rest of the world had not caught on and continued to send things via post or fax.

“Every morning, the news editor’s desk was buried with a pile of post to open containing dozens of press releases, letters from readers, invitations to events and submitted photographs and film.

“It has been 20 years since the Mail’s website launched, yet it is incredible how far it is come and how widely supported it is by readers and advertisers alike.”

How the masthead appeared on the Mail's front page

How the masthead appeared on the Mail’s front page