It was a milestone achievement on a milestone birthday.
In the month that Oakville News reached its 10th birthday, it also hit a high of 400,000 monthly readers and cracked the top 10 list of Ontario websites and blogs maintained by Feedspot.
For founder Nolan Machan, the publication’s success is the gratifying realization of a decade-old vision.
"I knew I wanted to engage people, build a sense of community and find the stories that people care about," he says.
"Sometimes I still pinch myself, but it’s beginning to feel permanent. I know that Oakville News is here to stay."
When he launched Oakville News near the end of 2012, Machan was looking to celebrate and connect with the people and stories of the town that has felt like his home since starting high school here in 1979.
After a career in sales and marketing in the book publishing industry, he had settled into semi-retirement with a plan to sell real estate.
But he also wanted to have a positive impact on people and indulge a love of journalism that dated back to his days in the University of Toronto school newspaper - the Medium.
Oakville News was launched as a part-time passion project, and for the first year, Machan juggled two jobs.
But he says that paying attention to all the things happening in Oakville let him see the generosity, compassion and power of the community and simply made him happy.
So, he parked his real estate license and made Oakville News his primary preoccupation.
"After a year, I realized that I was getting so much more gratification from telling the community’s stories than I was from real estate," he says. "It gave me a real sense of purpose."
Some of that satisfaction came from seeing the tangible results of his efforts.
All he wants for Christmas is to breathe, a story about Keith Taylor's search for a double lung transplant written by his wife Sarah, raised awareness of the need for organ donation. The message was amplified when CBC turned its attention to the case.
Tens of thousands clicked on Machan's stories about two missing local teens, who eventually came home after a jaunt to Toronto.
He publicized fundraising efforts for a young woman left severely disabled after being struck by a vehicle and in need of money for housing renovations. He watched local businesses like Maro's Bistro in Kerr Village blossom with a bit of publicity.
An enthusiastic foodie, Machan started up a series of restaurant reviews. Then added an events calendar to spread the word about local events and activities.
From Christmas light locations to real estate data to school rankings, many of his favourite stories were collections of information that people might find helpful.
"I’ve always been a bit of a gatherer of info," he says. "I like learning things and putting them together."
It was a fascination that would come in handy when the time came for years of reporting on COVID-19 results.
As word of Oakville News spread, local organizations were excited to share their news. Readers offered gratitude and positive feedback.
Working from his townhouse in the Kerr Street area, Machan slowly attracted some volunteers who were equally keen to share local news. But he shouldered most of the efforts of updating the website and publishing daily stories.
"It was basically me and a whole ton of volunteers," he says. "And for all intents and purposes, I was a volunteer."
Through connections with Sheridan College’s journalism program, he provided opportunities for a number of new students to take their first steps in the news industry.
One of those students, Tyler Collins, has been part of Oakville News since 2016 and is now the organization’s full-time assistant editor and arts reporter.
Meanwhile, Machan was teaching himself the technical things necessary to manage the publication in an evolving digital publishing world.
While he sold a few ads to help cover costs, he admits that Oakville News has always been his baby. And that made rejections feel too personal for him to develop much enthusiasm for advertising efforts.
He knew his baby would have to grow up to take Oakville News to the next level. Others would need to be involved. It was time.
In early 2020, a small group of Oakville-based investors, headed up by Ren Henderson, Chris Stoate and Aby Alameddine, joined Machan in the cause of local journalism.
"All of us remembered when local journalism told the stories of local residents, and we felt that in the new world of digital information, that gap, left by the decline of hard copy community news, could be filled," says Aby Alameddine.
"We all thought it was an important ingredient for Oakville, as it grows and becomes more diverse, to build on its history of prosperity and community harmony, a need that needed to be met. As a digital marketer, I was sure there was also a need for a publication that reached Oakvilleans who cared about their community."
"The hope was that we could help local businesses reach their customers directly at the same time as we informed those customers about their town."
The new investors brought cash, technical and business skills and local connections, along with the determination to see Oakville News become the town’s leading local and independent publication.
Diminishing coverage of important local events, politics and issues was the motivation for Stoate, a former town councillor.
"Local government doesn’t have parties or an official opposition," he says. "The only watchdog is a strong independent local news source."
"This is critical in a democracy: residents can’t watch every council meeting or even check the agendas. A strong local independent news source can alert them when there are issues where their opinion might differ from that of their town council."
The timing for ramping up Oakville News was terrible. But also perfect.
The pandemic delayed efforts to spearhead the drive to build advertisers for Oakville News, but at the same time, readers flocked to the website.
"All of a sudden, everyone was so mindful of what was happening locally," says Machan. "People wanted to know what was happening here, in town – with COVID, but with everything else too."
Before the pandemic, the website averaged 50,000 to 60,000 pageviews a month.
Over the coming years, those numbers would triple. And then double again.
Sometimes the top-read stories are predictable. Development and crime always interest people. Town proposals to charge for lakefront parking or reduce speed limits attracted plenty of readers.
But sometimes, the top stories are more surprising, like the one about a mysterious hole appearing in Coronation Park, which attracted 16,000 readers.
Short stories by community authors like Pat Skene, the Bad Joke of the Day, and, more recently, cartoons by Steve Nease have also found regular followers.
"I don’t always know why people read the stories they read," laughs Machan. "If I did, I would be running CNN."