B-Metro: 10 years on and still counting…

B-METRO this week marks a decade since that blistering and trailblazing entry on December 20, 2010, when it hit the streets amid the Christmas buzz.

The year 2010 marked the birth of a Zimbabwean tabloid, with B-Metro following hot on the heels of H-Metro that was launched earlier.

The publication sought to fill a gap in entertainment and social news that had nothing to do with politics that at the time was highly polarised.

The entry into a largely conservative society that had not seen publication of news of a personal nature really shook the market and elicited different views.

The journey began with the concept of a tabloid that had to be brought into fruition through a project team led by then Chronicle Assistant Editor Limukani Ncube.

The current editor was part of the Chronicle editorial team then.

The team leader steered the ship up until he was appointed founding editor of the newspaper and the publication weaned from Chronicle, under whose wings it was incubated.

As we celebrate the 10 years of ‘‘Real Drama in Skies’’, we pay tribute to all those that contributed to the founding and growth of the publication in various ways since its inception, from our readers to our advertisers.

We believe we have come of age. It has been an eventful 10 years.

Some of our readers may not know that B-Metro was launched as a daily publication when it initially hit the streets. However, business decisions had to be made at some point to print the popular publication weekly.

From those days we have seen the publication transform in many ways though retaining the drama, sex, scandal and crime story, through which it tries to show society its warts and all, and seeks to bring reflection on matters so that the community moderates its behaviour, not just for fear of B-Metro lenses, but for the good of the nation.

Having printed the publication without fail for years, the Covid-19-induced lockdown saw the publication cease printing in March, with the last printed copy having been on March 27.

We may have not felt it at the time, what with the sense of nostalgia sometimes quite overwhelming, the urge to feel the smell of newsprint, its texture between your fingers ever alluring, but the new normal saw us pioneer the exclusive production of PDFs in the Zimpapers Group as a way of distributing content.

This electronic form of the publication is the future of publishing with ‘‘newspapers’’ slowly disappearing.

We could not have imagined it in the third quarter of 2010, when we haggled over even the christening of what later became B-Metro, that one day we would have the news, minus the paper!

It was still foreseen but not yet embraced, even at the start of the first quarter of 2020, that one day we would give up newsprint, but then Covid-19 entered the fray, exeunt our procrastination and digitalisation fears!

As we celebrate our 10 years of existence it is our pledge that we shall continue to shine the spotlight on those societal blemishes, no matter how unpalatable they may be, as we believe we become a better people by looking ourselves in the mirror and reforming where we have to.

With Christmas upon us let us continue to follow Covid-19 guidelines so that we can interact into the future as Zimbabweans, united in our diversity.

Stay safe and happy reading!