Standard Publications Ltd burst onto the local media scene in 1992, with our flagship publication The Malta Independent on Sunday.
It was a novelty, offering readers something new - an independent English Language newspaper. It opened up the field and followed up with the first colour magazine to be distributed with a newspaper magazine - First - which has never missed a beat since it was introduced 22 years ago.
Standard Publications continued to grow with The Malta Business Weekly before it launched the daily newspaper in 1997. The next step was the first news website in Malta, not in a portal format as we know it today, but it was still yet another first.
TMID then became the first full colour newspaper in 2010. In 2012, we launched our full news portal, which saw us become the second most popular news site in Malta. And now, we bring you something different... something new.
A newspaper, or a news portal, is almost a living organism. It is a new product that has to be produced from scratch every day. There is always a loose plan, but inevitably, it always goes out of the window and editors and journalists scramble to make sense of what is going on in our country, and indeed the world, and present it to you.
It is with pride and love that we give you our latest product, a fully interactive and endless news portal - www.independent.com.mt. We have only been up and running for about 24 hours, but in the coming weeks, the portal will accumulate content that will allow you, the user, to scroll as far as you like to read stories from whenever you want and however you want.
Another aspect we have introduced is "My home", which allows you to register as a user and literally choose what you want to read. You can tick and untick topics at your own whim and change them whenever you want. If you are a political animal, you can choose to read only politics. If you are a sports fiend, you can read only sports. If you might be a socialite, you can tick lifestyle. Or you can tick a combination of more than 20 topics to pop up.
Another thing that we have paid attention to is impaired sight. We have increased our point size and we have presented things in a way to ensure that those who are older and may have impaired vision can see our content better.
Standard Publications has always striven to be innovative and to offer our readers - something innovative and different. We are confident that you will enjoy our new product and we invite you to explore it to its maximum and to personalise it as you see fit. After all, it is not ours, it is yours. Standard Publications thanks its readers for their loyal support and we hope to give you what you expect from us.