Ex-Guardian media editor Jim Waterson is launching a newsletter brand for “quality, in-depth journalism” covering London.
The announcement of London Centric comes weeks after Waterson took voluntary redundancy from The Guardian where he spent more than six years. He was previously political editor at Buzzfeed News.
London Centric will be a paid-for Substack-based newsletter with other as-yet unspecified formats set to follow. It promises original reporting on politics, transport, housing, crime, cultural institutions and life in the capital.
Waterson is charging £7.95 per month or £79.50 per year although the first 150 paying subscribers to sign up will get a 25% discount. Free subscribers will get only “occasional updates about London”. He told readers it will “swim or sink based on whether people pledge their support to it early on”.
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Waterson revealed his plans a day before the publication of the final daily print edition of the Evening Standard and a week before the first weekly edition of its new-look version The London Standard, which will hit the streets at about 4pm on Thursday 26 September.
Interim Standard chief executive Paul Kanareck has said the weekly edition will focus on “the best London has to offer, from entertainment guides to lifestyle, sports, culture, politics, news and the drumbeat of life in the world’s greatest city”.
Also coming up is a London launch from Mill Media, which is already known for its original journalism-led newsletter titles covering Manchester, Birmingham, Liverpool and Sheffield. The London title, which does not yet have a name or launch date, will be staffed by three people.
Mill Media’s titles were also based on Substack where Waterson is setting up shop, but told Press Gazette last week they are leaving the platform in favour of competitor Ghost. Subsack works on a revenue-share model, taking a 10% commission on subscriptions.
Waterson told Press Gazette that in London it is a case of the “more the merrier and I can’t wait to see what they’re doing”.
He said in a statement: “I’ve spent a lot of time reporting on the decline of the news industry. It’s clear there is an appetite for local news – but the existing business models just aren’t serving readers or journalists.
“The capital is at risk of becoming a ‘news desert’, with many outlets hit by deep cuts. London’s journalists and their readers have been let down by owners prioritising clickbait churn and unreadable sites filled with ads.
“London Centric will take a new approach to journalism that serves Londoners rather than newspaper owners. People often say the UK’s media is too London-centric. In reality it isn’t London-centric enough.”
Waterson, who will write the majority of the content with some freelance contributions, promised in an article announcing the launch that it “won’t be boring — my previous contributions to London journalism include frying an egg on the street using the Walkie Talkie skyscraper’s death ray, forcing the developer to spend tens of millions of pounds to fix the building.”
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