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Regional UK news start-up Mill Media, which provides online newsletters to subscribers several times a week in various cities, said it would launch a London operation just days after the capital’s Evening Standard said it would scale back its daily newspaper to a weekly edition.
The group, using funds raised last year from investors including CNN boss Mark Thompson and economist Diane Coyle, is aiming to double the size of its operations by the end of the year.
It will add offices in both London and Glasgow in 2024 to its existing bases in Manchester, Liverpool, Birmingham and Sheffield, arguing there is a gap in providing in-depth regional journalism at a time when local newspapers have been hit savagely by a fall in revenues in recent years.
The expansion plans mark a rare bright spot for local journalism, where thousands of jobs have been cut on the back of declining readerships.
Last year alone, Reach, the UK’s largest commercial news publisher, cut about 800 jobs, blaming the decision by Meta to cut support for news on Facebook and inflationary pressures that have forced up printing costs.
Joshi Herrmann, founder of the Manchester Mill newsletter, said that the “idea that London can’t support a thriving newspaper is a real alarm bell for how bad things have become for local journalism”.
However, Herrmann — a former Evening Standard journalist who also ran the Tab, a student website, and female-focused US site Babe.net — sees the need for a news-led publication that can cover local topics in depth.
“Coverage of local communities has been depleted and replaced with celebrity clickbait stories. People want high quality journalism, with real insight and perspective,” he told the Financial Times.
The Mill — founded in Manchester in 2020 — provides mainly long form, often investigative, journalism and reporting from local communities that are often underserved by newspapers.
Its newsletters have 7,500 subscribers, mostly paying up to £8.95 a month. About half pay annually, with 110,000 signed up to its free emails. It also generates some money from advertising. However, the site is still a fraction of the size of regional newspaper groups such as Reach, Newsquest and National World.
“The vast majority of our money comes from our readers so we do not need to be led by advertising clickbait,” said Herrmann, who has attracted attention from his vocal criticism of many of his larger regional rivals.
Herrmann said that its most recent launch in Birmingham has had the fastest take-up so far, and was hopeful that London, given its size and myriad of local communities and stories, would follow.
“There are so many stories in London that are not getting the scrutiny they need,” he said, pointing to the need to investigate claims made by the parties in the recent London mayoral election as an example.
Mill Media has so far funded its growth from its own profits, he said, but would use funds raised last year to support the launches in London and Glasgow. “We are profitable as a company so we haven’t yet used the money we raised. We want to hire lots of journalists and editors this year.”
