This week marks the 10th anniversary of the Sittingbourne News (formerly Sittingbourne News Extra). The editor who oversaw it all, Matt Ramsden, who now edits the Medway Messenger, looks back at how the paper came about and how things had to move at record speed...

I'd always loved the idea of launching a brand new newspaper but never thought that when/if the opportunity came about, I'd have just nine days to do it.

But that was the scenario we faced in December 2011 when the KM Group decided to launch the Sittingbourne News Extra.

The reason we had to move fast was because the town's long-standing title – the East Kent Gazette – had unexpectedly announced it was to cease publishing.

We had a Sittingbourne edition of the Kent Messenger serving the area but after page 20, it was just Medway news and wasn't the 'local' paper people wanted to see.

When the EKG announced its intention to close, senior editorial and commercial colleagues met to discuss what to do and how to do it.

Over the course of a few days, the conversation went back and forth as it wasn't a straightforward decision for many different reasons – not least because the economy was on its knees at the time.

But the decision was made and the countdown started in earnest as we needed to be quick to fill the gap so readers didn't get used to not having a paper on sale.

One of the best decisions we made was to breakaway from our usual masthead style and make the top of SNE blue so people associated it with the EKG.

I lost count over the years how many readers told me they thought they were still reading the Gazette, although the "content had really improved".

So after nine very long days and a lot of hard work from people across the group, SNE hit the streets and was a great success – immediately selling hundreds more copies than we initially hoped it would.

The first reporting team was Hayley Robinson, Gemma Constable and Emma Grove who have all since left journalism. Andy Payton was our photographer, Matt Panting our sports editor and Kim Billings the head of advertising.

The Gazette's news editor Steve Waite soon joined us and now works for KentOnline.

Usually, launching a new paper takes months with meetings, much brain-storming and hours of reader research

But when you've only nine days from launch decision to publication, such niceties have to go out of the window.

SNE wasn't a totally new experience for the team as the existing Sittingbourne Messenger had been around for many years and we had been based in the High Street.

But there are all sorts of technical, behind-the-scenes stuff you need to do when setting up a new paper, such as getting it established on the editorial computer system and assigning edition codes to it. Boring but vital.

However, as always content is king and we knew we didn't necessarily have to reinvent the wheel when working out how we wanted the paper to look.

As well as the weekly news and sport, we decided to introduce columns and traditional features such as Memory Lane, The Write Stuff, My Town and Have We Got Views For You.

Memory Lane was our local history page, dedicated to all things past; Write Stuff was an opportunity for locals to have their say in 300 words; My Town was a Q&A with a prominent person and Views For You was a voxpop survey of six people in the street.

The nine days – which still included producing the sister titles Sheerness Times Guardian and Sittingbourne Messenger – were packed with action and nervous energy.

Staff in our Sheerness office were joined by production colleagues in Larkfield in working hard to make sure the launch went without a hitch,

The newsroom was buzzing as we attempted to write as many stories as possible and complete as many pages as we could ahead of time.

And then it was all done and dusted when on December 14, the first Sittingbourne News Extra hit the streets – 96 pages, comprising 72 news stories, four pages of nativity photos, seven pages of local sport, a new letters page plus a 40-page county leisure guide and much more.

If that wasn't enough, our colleagues in the newspaper sales department sourced some welcome reader offers such as festive pies and football tickets.

The first publication day was a proud one for staff as scores of kind readers called to congratulate us on a job well done. That was apart from one aggrieved man who said "there was nothing in it".

After it was pointed out there were: 96 pages, comprising 72 news stories, four pages of nativity photos, seven pages of local sport, a new letters page, plus a 40-page county leisure guide, he replied: "Well, there's nothing in it for me."

Just goes to show you can't please all the people all of the time.

Tomorrow: Ten years of regeneration