On the quandary of scale, I agree. But I’m also seeing an unexpected grassroots/independent movement. Since starting The Edinburgh Minute (on Substack) in 2023 (and 500+) daily editions ago, the thing has become my job. It’s featured 1,600+ stories sent in by readers (verified and published by me) in the past year. That income freed me up to start The London Minute last year (also on Substack), now at 170 editions. Both have the same model: free unless you want to pay. Why do people pay? I’ve surveyed them and most say it’s goodwill; to support local news that’s ad-free and that links to sources. What I didn’t expect was there are now more than 20 similar newsletters doing the same thing in cites including Melbourne, Dublin and Brighton. In the past two years, I’ve met people for video calls around the world who said The Minute format inspired them and they’ve gone and started their own. It’s heartening to see and it’s sending local publishers a lot of traffic they weren’t otherwise getting. Worryingly though, London’s local news is - as you suggest - still not thriving in ways it should be. Doing my best to support it daily. Here’s to more!
Thanks for this response and congrats on everything you've achieved. I love the value-for-value model (it's what I used, rather pathetically, with this newsletter), but I've come to feel, over the past couple of years, that it's not going to arrest the decline of journalism as a profession or industry. So it's a funny one for me: I'm seeing some of the best specialised local journalism in years, all while feeling like it's contributing to the overall decline in local journalist numbers and the commensurate shrinkage of local reporting. But what you're doing (and what Mill Media are doing) could be different – I just hope that, at some point, you can employ a team of reporters and broadcasters and operate, I guess, more like a traditional media company.
You nailed it in your final paragraph I think. Local news found a workaround for distribution (and perhaps monetisation) through newsletters. Big conurbations can sustain such endeavours (even multiple in the case of London), but all the smaller places will likely continue to struggle.
On the quandary of scale, I agree. But I’m also seeing an unexpected grassroots/independent movement. Since starting The Edinburgh Minute (on Substack) in 2023 (and 500+) daily editions ago, the thing has become my job. It’s featured 1,600+ stories sent in by readers (verified and published by me) in the past year. That income freed me up to start The London Minute last year (also on Substack), now at 170 editions. Both have the same model: free unless you want to pay. Why do people pay? I’ve surveyed them and most say it’s goodwill; to support local news that’s ad-free and that links to sources. What I didn’t expect was there are now more than 20 similar newsletters doing the same thing in cites including Melbourne, Dublin and Brighton. In the past two years, I’ve met people for video calls around the world who said The Minute format inspired them and they’ve gone and started their own. It’s heartening to see and it’s sending local publishers a lot of traffic they weren’t otherwise getting. Worryingly though, London’s local news is - as you suggest - still not thriving in ways it should be. Doing my best to support it daily. Here’s to more!
Thanks for this response and congrats on everything you've achieved. I love the value-for-value model (it's what I used, rather pathetically, with this newsletter), but I've come to feel, over the past couple of years, that it's not going to arrest the decline of journalism as a profession or industry. So it's a funny one for me: I'm seeing some of the best specialised local journalism in years, all while feeling like it's contributing to the overall decline in local journalist numbers and the commensurate shrinkage of local reporting. But what you're doing (and what Mill Media are doing) could be different – I just hope that, at some point, you can employ a team of reporters and broadcasters and operate, I guess, more like a traditional media company.
You nailed it in your final paragraph I think. Local news found a workaround for distribution (and perhaps monetisation) through newsletters. Big conurbations can sustain such endeavours (even multiple in the case of London), but all the smaller places will likely continue to struggle.