Mill Media, the Substack-based publisher behind the Manchester Mill, Liverpool Post, Birmingham Dispatch and Sheffield Tribune, has announced a major hiring round, looking to add 11 roles in the next six months.
The jobs – which span editorial, production and commercial responsibilities – will pay between £25,000 and £50,000 and have been advertised to coincide with the forthcoming launch of Mill titles in London and Glasgow. The expansion will double Mill Media’s headcount when complete.
Mill Media editor-in-chief Joshi Herrmann said the expansion had been prompted by news last week that the Evening Standard is set to go down from a daily print publication schedule to weekly. The Glasgow launch has been planned for longer. Herrmann said the city was “the traditional home of Scottish journalism, so I know we will find lots of great writers and editors who want to contribute”.
The Mill’s growth will be fuelled by previously-untapped funding of £350,000 raised last year from a group of private investors including Axios publisher Nicholas Johnston and CNN chief executive and former BBC and New York Times boss Mark Thompson. Mill Media claims to have been profitable since that fundraising round in September and now counts 7,750 paying members across its newsletter titles alongside 110,000 free subscribers.
The publisher says it is hiring the new roles over three rounds, adding four staff members in June/July, four more in August/September and three in October/November. There are six staff writer roles open, two assistant editor jobs, and positions available for a copy editor, advertising sales manager and social/video producer.
Five of the jobs are based at Mill headquarters in Manchester, three in London and one each in Glasgow, Liverpool and Birmingham.
The job listings give a look into the work culture at Mill Media. In line with the business' professed goal of "giving journalists the time they need to write great stories", the job ads say staff writers "are expected to file roughly one story per week, anything from 1,000 to 3,000 words". Manchester-based staff are expected to come into the Mill office four times a week.
Earlier this week The London Spy revealed that it had attracted 225 paid subscribers in the first month of its Substack-based newsletter going behind a paywall.
Last month another The London Minute launched a free daily newsletter for London providing a daily digest of links every morning at 7am.
[Read more: Fleet Street bosses battle to revive newsroom spirit in the age of flexible working]
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