Editor’s Note

WORDS: Editor - Brian Usher PHOTOGRAPHY Brian Usher - www.usherusher.com

After 12 years of publishing Ocean Road Magazine, we feel very confident our brand continues to grow as a respected voice for the region while flying the print media flag in an ever-changing media world.

Through new partnerships with significant local media businesses, we have created an editorial board that will help drive our editorial content into the next decade and provide content of local and national importance, breaking important stories the mainstream media embrace and spread nationally.

Inspired by Vanity Fair Magazine, Ocean Road’s cover will now have the tagline ‘The Gold Coast’s Only True Journal’, further reinforcing our editorial goals and bringing into focus a new era of independent journalism not created by any other local publication.

With investigative journalism under fire from all sides including government regulation and diminishing newspaper revenue, ORM will strive to take up the mantle and as they say, “keep the bastards honest”.

Online news has been tarnished with “fake news” and presents news that is not subject to the same level of scrutiny that print media must conform with or face litigation. It is important that print media is maintained and grows to ensure that government and corporate greed is held to account.

Investigative journalism is such an important part of our society – to lose it would surely move us towards those states that suffer from massive corruption, greed and environmental devastation. To quote Shakespeare’s Macbeth: “Power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely.”

Unchecked power will ensure that the rich get richer to the detriment of the rest of society. That’s not the sort of place I want to live and I am sure neither would you.

We look forward to sharing hard-hitting stories that will drive change where needed.