In a flash event that took place at The Rose in Port Melbourne, Neos Kosmos celebrated an early Christmas with its staff, contributors, selected guests and stakeholders.

Among the esteemed guests were the CEO of PRONIA Tina Douvos Stathopoulou and PRONIA President Kris Pavlidis;  Michael Malakonas,Chief Executive Officer at Fronditha Care and Zoe Angeli, the organisation’s Executive General Manager for Communications and Public Affairs; Theoharis Alaveras, Regional Manager for Community Business Development at the Bank of Sydney and of course the Greek Community’s President Bill Papastergiadis.

Neos Kosmos’ director Chris Gogos, gave a heartfelt speech, acknowledging the efforts and dedication of everyone that helped support the newspaper, which proved to be a much needed outlet for the Greek Community and especially its elderly members.

“When the first lockdown became a reality we reassured our team and most importantly reassured our readers,” Mr Gogos said.

“There was much fear and uncertainty in the community and it was our mission to ensure that we allayed those fears with facts and accurate reporting and continuous coverage across all our mediums. I believe we accomplished exactly what we set out to do which became evident with the increased the sales of our newspapers and our website visitors doubling.”

Thanking the staff and long-term contributors namely, he added: “We could have not done any of this without the enormous dedication and professionalism of our team. A team I am extremely proud of. I thank everyone of you for believing in each other, believing in yourselves and believing in Neos Kosmos.”

Despite the positive reader feedback, Mr Gogos highlighted that Neos Kosmos was not immune to Covid-19.

The newspaper, inevitably also copped a massive hit to its advertising revenue for months on end, causing more than a little anxiety. But it somehow got through to the end of this year.

“I would like to acknowledge both federal government assistance with job-keeper, cashflow boosts and advertising, and the Victorian government who also provided small business grants and who kept our readers and our community informed through significant rolling campaign advertising.”

“Whilst the advertising was most welcome to keep us afloat, it has been the messages themselves that have been of utmost importance to our readers,” Mr Gogos explained.

“I cannot stress enough the importance of in-language messaging, especially during a crisis period. They are critical for keeping our communities informed.”

Neos Kosmos’ director also stressed the importance of a major breakthrough accomplished thanks to the skills and network of  Fotis Kapetopoulos, who managed to bring all the multicultural media together to discuss their challenges. For the first time, multicultural media spoke as one voice to government, to lay the seeds of a more permanent body, even if it took multiple zoom calls.

“And our efforts did not go unnoticed, securing a significant grant allocation from the Vic gov for all multicultural media,” Mr Gogos saids

“An acknowledgement that is welcome during these very challenging times. We hope our federal counterparts can also see the merits of what we do for the community at large in providing public interest journalism and to assist us as well during times of crisis and not just the big end of town.”

Mr Gogos ended his speech on a sobering note, highlighting the toll Covid-19 has taken on the Greek Community.

“In Victoria no single community has been affected more so than ours, with approximately 150 Greek Australian deaths attributed to Covid (of the 820 to date), mostly in aged care,” he said.

“I would like to acknowledge the families of those who lost loved ones with our deepest sympathies. And I would also like to acknowledge the trauma and mental stress that has affected so many in our community. We have attempted to represent you as best we can and I believe our team has done an outstanding job.”

Finally, he said that Neos Kosmos could have represented its readers even better had the newspaper’s journalists been permitted to attend the Victorian Premier’s media conferences.

“An old and outdated system of media representation thwarted our every efforts. Nevertheless we look forward to a new year in 2021 with new attention to this issue and have every belief that your voices will be heard through our representation.”