By Sharon Tibenda

13^th June 2011:

Image from the first ISSUE

Uganda Correspondent will this week celebrate its very first birthday since joining the tough, fast, and furious world of news publishing.  It was launched a year ago on the 15^th of June 2010 by young but ambitious Ugandan Journalists at a quiet and low key ceremony.

For the entire year, Uganda Correspondent has operated as an online news publication with only a handful of Journalists.  That notwithstanding, it has built up a respectable readership in its first twelve months.  As a result, plans are now underway to shake up the editorial team in preparation for production of hard copies in the near future.

Mr. Timothy Nsubuga, who is the acting Managing Editor of Uganda Correspondent, said, “…it has been a very tough year for us.  But we didn’t expect anything less than that from the moment we launched a year ago; largely because we started with and are still operating on a very low budget.  But in only twelve months, we have achieved a level of readership that took our competitors nearly five years to build”.

Nsubuga added that while Uganda Correspondent is proud to have exposed the ‘ghost voters’ it discovered on the electoral registers in Erute North and South constituencies, and in Lologi, it is particularly proud of two big stories that it broke in the 2010-2011 election year.

“…We broke the news about Dr. Besigye’s plans to tally and declare his own [presidential] results as well as FDCs parliamentary results.  Our story [See: We shall declare our own results in 2011, Besigye] set the agenda for public debate and it dominated political discourse for an entire year; culminating in government security agents besieging FDC’s results tallying centre.  That is something that we look back on with great pride as newcomers in the field”, Nsubuga said.

The second big achievement, Nsubuga said, was that Uganda Correspondent succeeded in convincing veteran UNLA commander Col. John Ogole to give his first interview in a quarter of a century.  “…The Ogole interview was big.  It was exactly what we needed for our launch.  After all, the man had not talked to the media for nearly 25 years but we got him to speak to us at length about his experiences in the Luwero Triangle war”, said Nsubuga.

Nsubuga also paid tribute to some Journalists like Norman Miwambo who have been writing for Uganda Correspondent without pay.  “…We are eternally grateful to Journalists like Norman Miwambo.  Same applies to Julius Odeke and Sam Orach.  At an appropriate time, we might surprise them with an invitation to a big celebratory party”, Nsubuga said.  END.  Please login to www.ugandacorrespondent.com every Monday to read our top stories and anytime mid-week for our news updates.