Anniversary: ​​Faxinfo is 30 years old today!

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Sunday, January 31, 1993, 2nd tour of the regional elections of Guadeloupe. I am a scrutineer in the Hervé Williams school polling station. The deputy returning officer is the person who participates in the verification and counting of a ballot. At the end of the day the news falls: Lucette Michaux-Chevry wins and the left loses the Guadeloupe Region. Having in hand the results of these regional elections, something tells me that I must inform the population of Saint-Martin of this event.

There is hardly any written information at this time and France-Antilles arrives a day late. At that time, I had a plan for a monthly “newsletter” in the pipeline, with the intention of sending it by fax to the customers of my office equipment company. I had already given a name to this “newsletter” and I had entered all the fax numbers of Saint-Martin. I remember there were about 200 at the time, most still using thermal paper.

Neither one nor two, I go ahead and prepare a quick layout on my Macintosh SE and its small black and white screen. In main info, the regional elections of course. To complete these news, I get on minitel - and yes no internet in 1993 - some international and sports news as well as the rate of the dollar compared to the… franc. Then I call the Météo-France answering machine. I reread and at 5 am, I send the N°1 of Faxinfo to all the faxes in Saint-Martin. On this Monday, February 1, 1993, encouraged by the first positive reactions from readers, I decided “to see”, to continue the next day and the following days. Success is on the way. I therefore decided to develop this activity and to continue to inform the population of Saint-Martin in this form, by fax. A free daily was born. Early 1995, first  improvement, Faxinfo is printed in black and white on A4 paper and is distributed on displays. The day after Luis and in the absence of looting, we quickly relaunched Faxinfo and distributed it in the street in front of our old offices. Then in 1998, the move to color allowed us to take a new turn and achieve a version close to the one you are reading today.

September 2010, we print this free newspaper on our own printing press on offset paper which allows us to go to 4 pages every day and to 8 or 12 on Fridays in order to offer you more info.

Today Faxinfo is also a website, a presence on social networks and an online version in pdf which can be downloaded for free.

A constant evolution that has accompanied the life of Saint-Martin with the desire to be a media of connection and synthesized information read by the greatest number.

Here, in a few lines, is a retrospective of the genesis and evolution of your daily life. We owe this success not only to our production and distribution team, but also to our readers and our advertisers, without whom we could not exist. It is thanks to your loyalty that we are here.

Thank you to all of you.

Alain Haillant, Publication director.

 

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Faxinfo: https://www.faxinfo.fr/

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  1. david fabi February 1, 2023 at 08:11 am Reply

    That's a great story! I wondered how the name came to be! I love reading all the articles about St.Martin and all things to do on the island!! After 22 years and something like 30 more trips. There is always something new to find out about!! Thank you!!

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