No matter the person or the organisation, a 100th anniversary is always worth recognising. So forgive us if we take a little time to celebrate this 100th edition of the Astana Times.
When we published our first edition back on November 30, 2010, a day ahead of the historic OSCE Summit in Astana, we had a clear idea what we wanted to do. Our aim was to help inform those living in and visiting Astana and Kazakhstan, including investors and diplomats who don’t speak Kazakh or Russian about what was happening in the city and the country.
We choose English as it is the closest the world now has to a universal language – and is certainly likely to be the one most spoken and understood by our target readership. And we decided to publish a print and not just a digital edition because we wanted something people could pick up and read.
What we did not know, of course, when we published the first edition is that we would be reporting on a very challenging period for Kazakhstan. How our country has responded to the impact of the world economic slowdown and the reforms put in place to protect progress has been one of the major stories we have covered for our readers.
But we have also increasingly looked outside the world of politics and business to give our readers a broader flavour of life in Kazakhstan. We hope to continue to cover more off-beat stories in the future.
Looking back at the very first editions, it is clear that it is considerably different to the paper today. Edition by edition, we hope that we are getting better not only in the way we present the news but also the range of topics we cover.
Like everything in life, there is always room for improvement but we are pleased to hear from readers that they find the Astana Times increasingly informative and interesting. We are proud as well that our website has become one of the most-visited English-language websites about Kazakhstan. We intend to continue this progress over the next 100 editions.
So thank you for reading the Astana Times and please let us know what we can do to make our paper even better in the future.
