Please join us in wishing The Rochester Voice a Happy Birthday!

From left, Corinna Cole, Martha T. Soto Galicia, Harrison Thorp and Sara Thorp at its Business of the Year celebration in November at The Oaks Grand Ballroom in Somersworth. (Maureen Steer photo)

When The Lebanon Voice put out its first story on a drag 'n' drop website 10 years ago today, little did we know that we would grow to a unique device readership of more than 50,000 monthly users today, with 5,000 daily visitors and nearly 3,000 subscribers

But we did.

Looking back on that first year - during which we only covered Lebanon, Maine, is pretty special. I remember writing a story in an hour or so, then painstakingly setting every stick of copy one by one, trying to make it pretty and clean to the eye.

It would sometimes take as much time to place the pictures, type, cutline and headline as it did to get the quotes, research the article and write the damn thing.

But when we saw our reach growing exponentially in the tiny town of Lebanon, with readers from Rochester and Milton also getting onboard, we knew we couldn't stop.

About a month later, the late Roger Tessier of Tessier Electric in Lebanon called me up out of the blue and said he wanted to put in an ad and how much would it cost.

"I don't know," I said, "maybe $40 a month?"

"I'll be over with the cash," he replied.

A couple of months later we started covering Milton and less than a year after that we began covering Rochester.

We realized we could compete with the other local paper and not spread ourselves too thin, while still covering all three towns.

Then in 2017 when the former Rochester Times ceased publication, we rebranded as The Rochester Voice, and the rest is history.

Along the way the digital daily has won 10 New Hampshire Press Association Distinguished Journalism awards and the Greater Rochester Chamber of Commerce Business of the Year for 2021.

It's been a wild ride, with ups and downs, triumphs and tribulations, blood, sweat, tears and plenty of laughter along the way, too.

Here's to another 10 more.

We'd like to go on and on about how wonderful the experience has been ... but who's got the time!

And don't forget that to celebrate we are offering a full year subscription for just $10. That's $60 off the regular price and about 3 cents a day. The special lasts till the end of April. To go to the deal click here.

Harrison Thorp, editor and publisher

Martha T. Soto Galicia, president

Corinna Cole, marketing, reporting

Sara Thorp, secretary, administrative