By Sophia Lashmar, Year 12
As you may not have already known, every March, the LGB Express celebrates its birthday! It was founded in March 2012, and has been going strong ever since!
In order to celebrate each year, the paper undergoes what we call ‘March Madness’. This is when we aim to have all of our articles explicitly LGB or Ecolint-focused, and to publish a few funny articles to increase readership!
This month, we will be launching a short story writing competition for the Creative section, we will be conducting interviews with student club leaders, asking people on campus for their input in answering this year’s Universal Questions, and of course, we will be doing our best to increase readership of the Express!
If you still haven’t taken a look at our About page, you can find out about the Express’s founding, or read about it here…
Imagine going back 12 years in time, to Ecolint in 2012!
This is the first time in Ecolint history that an online newspaper specific to one campus has been created.
Initial Marketing Campaign
The initial marketing strategy was nicknamed the “Mr Carpentier and Mr Featherstone Eureka Moment”. This was a photo of the two fighting each other (with giant pencils) for the honour of naming the paper. This photo was distributed around school with no explanation whatsoever (including unusual places like teacher smart board screens and cafeteria trays) in order to catch LGB secondary school students’ interest.
A leaflet was then distributed through mentor classes explaining the teaser photo, the electronic newspaper, and the Naming Contest which gave students the opportunity of naming this electronic newspaper. There were over 129 submissions, and after a secondary school wide vote, the winning name was determined: The LGB Express (submitted by Andrea Stanovic).
The Official Launch Ceremony, wherein the LGB Express was made available to the public, occurred on Wednesday 14th March 2012. The date coincided with the celebrations of Creativity Week. Following a brief speech by Founding Editor-in-Chief Catherine Jay detailing the journey made by the Express team, Mr Featherstone pushed the button to make the LGB Express “live”!
Design of Logo
From the beginning, it was important to design a clean, catchy logo for l’Express. The first graphic designer involved in the process was LGB student Eliott Smadja, who came up with the concept of including the Ecolint logo in the word ‘LGB’. Then, the each member of the staff designed a logo incorporating this feature for a vote the following meeting. Ms. Kretzmeier, English teacher and the supervisor of l’Express, designed the unanimous winner.
Founding Staff
It would have been extremely hard to get this far were it not for The LGB Express staff, the people who helped to make all this happen.
Now, 12 years on, the LGB Express is still carrying on the work of the founding editors and team, and this is thanks to all of students who both read and write for the Express, the teachers who graciously give their time to be interviewed, to answer article-related questions and who supervise it, so thank you!
As the Express celebrates March Madness this year, we have two requests to ask of our readers… First, please make sure to tell your friends about the Express, post about it on social media, and share it with your parents and teachers. Second, keep an eye out for all of our special articles and publicity this March!
