Augusta Free Press launched on July 2, 2002, our goal at the beginning being to springboard from digital eventually into a weekly print paper.
Which never happened, probably fortunately for us.
Today marks our 19th birthday, which means we’ve made it roughly 18 years and nine months longer than we’d assumed we would back in 2002.
We gave ourselves three months to see if we could find some investors, a bank loan officer willing to take a chance on us, if neither of those worked out, win the lottery.
None of that happened, so in the end, it was being frugal, working hard, plowing through, and a bit of luck.
We worked second jobs, took on freelance opportunities back when that was still a thing, built a website design and marketing business on the side, dabbled in the live-events business …
And made it.
And made a lot of friends along the way.
In addition to being a part of two Waynesboro Generals Valley League championships, a sellout pro wrestling national pay-per-view TV event at Augusta Expo, sat courtside at the Final Four when UVA basketball finally won a national title, among many things.
We don’t claim to have been able to have foreseen any of that way back in 2002.
We were just thinking: can we make it three months? Because if we can, maybe we can make it another three months.
Thanks for being a part of what has been, and promises to continue to be, a wild ride.
Story by Chris Graham
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