Handing Over the Editorial Reins of The Latz Report

Wollongong NSW

As every business owner knows, sometimes you have to make tough decisions, especially when it comes to controlling costs and keeping them less than income.

So it was with great regret that I decided to at least partially let go of our superstar Editor, Scott Green. I’ve included a farewell note from Scott below. This is slightly modified version of the same letter that we ran in our most recent Micromobility Report newsletter which he has also edited for over two years.

Before adding any more details, I’d like to take this opportunity to publicly thank Scott for the outstanding work he’s done on The Latz Report – so far!

Those final two words are like a glimmer of hope on the horizon. As I had little doubt would happen for someone of his high calibre, Scott has been quickly snapped up by a major corporation in a full time communications role. But hopefully in his ‘spare time’ between work, family and bush property management, he’ll still be able to contribute some articles to The Latz Report.

Meanwhile, I’m stepping back into the Editor role, which feels a bit like déjà vu. I was Editor in the very early days of Bicycling Australia magazine which we founded in 1989. As we gradually grew our team, I mainly worked on the business side for most of the next 25 years. But I’ve always contributed articles, first for Bicycling Australia, Mountain Biking Australia and Bicycling Trade magazines, and now in our ‘media 2.0’ era, for The Latz Report and the Micromobility Report.

I’m looking forward to getting back in closer touch with all of you and intend to be back on the road in 2024, starting with the Tour Down Under then Taipei Cycle and later Eurobike, with no doubt many other industry events in between. So please say hello if you see me, and always feel free to contact me directly with any news, story suggestions or questions to phil@thelatzreport.com.au or call or text to 0414 637 886.

Finally, if you think The Latz Report website looks a bit different, you’re right. On Monday 4th December we went live with a complete site rebuild. The new site loads much faster and will be more robust. We’ve also taken the opportunity to simplify the menus, streamline the design and hopefully make your user experience simpler and more enjoyable. A special thanks to our web guru, Blaise Spennato for his excellent work, along with in-house help from Marli, Ed and Gary.

If you look at the top right of any of our articles you will see a small eye symbol with a number alongside it. This is a live counter showing the number of times each article has been opened. We’ve been able to carry forward the data from our old site.

As part of the transition we downloaded an archive our historical data before switching over to the new site. For those of you who like statistics you may be interested to know that until 1st December 2023 our articles were opened a total of 688,470 times, which across 1,199 articles equals an average of 574 opens per article. Our top 137 articles have had 1,000 or more opens up to that date.

As always, we’d love to hear your feedback.

A Letter from Scott

This is my last issue as editor of the The Latz Report and its sister publication, Micromobility Report.

I would like to thank everyone I’ve met and that has helped us put these magazines together during my two and a half years in the role. The micromobility and bicycle sectors are full of many wonderful, motivated and dedicated people who are driving these industries forward and will hopefully succeed in getting them where they deserve to be.

I implore everyone to continue to read and support The Latz Report, and to share it with others at every opportunity. It provides the essential glue to bind the industry, to keep its members informed and collaborating so that combined efforts can grow micromobility in Australia as much as possible and as quickly as possible.

It’s always a challenge to make online publications financially viable and that’s particularly tough during the post-Covid lull being experienced by much of the bicycle industry. For that reason, it’s no longer tenable for The Latz Report to have a standalone editor, a role that will somehow fit within owner Phil Latz’s already considerable responsibilities.

Phil is unswerving in his passion and commitment to the micromobility and bicycle industries and I trust the industries will be equally supportive in backing Phil’s ventures to document, analyse and foster the sectors to which he has dedicated his entire working life.

It has been a terrific journey plotting the course of the bicycle industry – while sitting in my small home office on the Northern Tableland and watching the horses and occasional kangaroo journey past my window.

I’m extremely grateful to Phil for the opportunity to mould and nurture this publication and for the camaraderie of its small and energetic team.

Fortunately, I won’t be leaving it completely. I will continue to be involved with both the Micromobility Report and The Latz Report as a contributor of features and other articles as opportunities arise.

I look forward to keeping in touch with many of you.

Until we meet again.