Well, this is the last time I would sit down and write an article as the Editor for Mid-Town. I’m going to take you on a brief journey of my time as an editor and the theme for the year which was “Well, that escalated quickly.” But if I have to describe last year with a single word it would be blursday but someone melodious would probably come up with a prettier word, but I guess I’ll stick to blursday. Being an editor became more than just a role-play over the year, it became a part of me and I loved the position to my very core. If we had to repeat the year minus the pandemic, increasing number of unemployment and getting loans from our mother country (no wonder apocalypse bingo became a thing) I would do it in a heartbeat, cause it’s one of the best positions anyone could ask for.
The best part of the role was coming up with crazy content for the blog. We introduced 3 new series this year which were, The Installation Blog series which racked up over 26k views, Pandemic Diaries where we wrote about the Stop The Spread initiative by the Rotaract, Interact and Rotary clubs in District 3220 with a view count upwards of 4K and the highlighted series being the Murder Mysteries where we released 6 articles ranging from all 4 corners of the globe. I know, I know, corners and globe don’t go together but so doesn’t pineapple on pizza but everyone is fine with that for some freakish reason, we got a view count of over 5k which was beyond expectations. From the beginning of the year, we started something called the Controversial Topics where we released 10 topics ranging from Whale Stranding, to the recent Chemical Leakage into the sea to the MMDA and the Sri Lankan MasterChef, no wonder I saw so many Instagram stories where people started baking banana bread, probably trying to peel off the stress of working from home. I think the most challenging task was to come up with titles where our audience would learn and discuss them among fellow club members. We pulled out all the stops when it came to our new and revamped blog. Our team had numerous weapons in the battle to stay as one of the best blogs in the Rotaract movement.
We revamped our website this year with a whole new look and feel to it, those sleepless nights working on the content with Dina and Farzan have definitely paid off.
Mid Town has been a bellwether when it has come to setting trends from the #wearemidtown to giving out hoodies to its members (not for free of course, it’s not like we are a charity organization to give it for free 😉) and the birth of a digital revolution, Rotaract TV. Yet again Mid Town is setting trends in the District of 3220 on our blog by introducing a new concept to Rotaract Blogs called the forum, where anyone can comment on a given topic where we have taken the step forward in forming digital communities within the Rotaract fraternity. We call it The Huddle.
The Mid Town blog acquired an overall viewing of 50k new views this year. The blog dates back to 2015 when PP Zayan launched the first-ever website for the club. Ours was one of the very few clubs that had a website at the time. Since then the Club’s website and the blog has come a long way. This year the blog witnessed a whopping overall viewer count of 100k!
Our Story Tellers were pretty insane, to be honest. It’s not even fair. Together we have published over 60 articles this year. I’d like to take a moment to thank each and every writer who has contributed to the blog and to bring it to what it is today because they’re the ones responsible for all of the growth and views of the Mid Town blog.
I hope we inspired the writers of Mid Town to continue writing more incredible material for the blog in the future.
I hope you have enjoyed the subtle puns and jokes placed on our blog articles throughout the year and also learned something from them, so you have some funny material to share with your friends, if not here’s one. Being a writer is enjoyable… But the job of an editor is more rewarding.
A huge thanks should go to Dina for entrusting me with the blog and also for agreeing to whatever controversial topic I brought forward (ok, well not all the time) and Hibshi for all the proofreading, especially the last-minute ones.
A blog post is never complete in the absence of our wonderful readers, without whom we wouldn’t have been able to reach the many milestones we’ve achieved this year. Looking back at 2020 with everyone battling a pandemic, and a year with so much happening globally, it has been a roller coaster ride gradually turning out to be the new normal. They say “every cloud has a silver lining”, and in this case, the silver lining being “new learnings”, to be carried out as the new theme for the coming year. We’ve battled through it all and I’m glad all of us are up and running to do our best for the year 2021-2022.
To conclude what has been a very educational and a huge learning curve for me. This is Rtr. Kaizer Majid officially bowing out as the Editor of Mid Town for the Rotaract Year 2020-2021.
