Update, 28 October 2024: Mill Media has completed its latest round of expansion, following its Glasgow title The Bell with the launch of “The Londoner” in the capital.
It is the sixth brand from the local newsletter publisher and the second to be launched away from Substack, where the network of titles originated.
The Londoner is starting out with three full-time reporters — feature writer and critic Hannah Williams, former FT staffer Miles Ellingham and former Press Gazette reporter Andrew Kersley. A dedicated editor for the brand has not yet been hired.
As at The Bell, stories on The Londoner will initially be free to read before moving behind a paywall in the next few months. The title’s first story was an exclusive by Kersley reporting that a Labour MP is “the landlord of a failing children’s home”, which The Londoner says the MP has threatened to sue over and was briefly acknowledged by Keir Starmer during a press conference.
The launch adds another small, paid-for journalism brand to London’s media scene. This summer saw the opening of London Centric, a Substack-based publication from former Guardian media editor Jim Waterson, the launch of a paywall at fellow London news Substack London Spy and the fifth birthday of London-focused print magazine The Fence.
Mill Media founder and interim Londoner editor Joshi Herrmann told Press Gazette “there will be some great competition for us in London”, citing other brands including the local government-focused On London, digest newsletter London Minute and “some really good borough-level newspapers like the Camden New Journal and the Social Spider papers”.
He also anticipated competition from The London Standard, the weekly successor to the daily Evening Standard newspaper. The Standard’s closure as a daily, which resulted in the loss of some 70 editorial jobs, was cited by the founders as a prompt for the creation of both The Londoner and Waterson’s London Centric.
Herrmann said London “should have dozens of outlets doing different kinds of journalism”, adding: “I think our mission and tastes are a bit different to what there is already out there, and I hope we’ll find an audience that loves The Londoner.”
Upcoming stories include features “about the difficulty of writing a ‘London novel’, about the queer nightlife scene, about the experience of dating in London and about certain conspiracy theories that have embedded themselves in the capital’s psyche”, Herrmann said, as well as stories from outside contributors Imogen West-Knights, David Aaronovitch, Zing Tseng, David James Smith and Kemi Alemoru.
The expansion has been funded out of £350,000 of investment raised from figures including CNN boss Mark Thompson and Axios publisher Nicholas Johnston.
Original story, 25 September 2024: The new Glasgow-focused title from local newsletter start-up Mill Media will be named The Bell, Press Gazette can reveal.
The new title will begin to publish on Monday (30 September), initially without a paywall, and aims to release new content three times a week.
As previously reported by Press Gazette The Bell is staffed by two full-time employees: former Novara Media contributing editor Moya Lothian-McLean and former freelance Robbie Armstrong.
They will be supported by Glaswegian writer Ophira Gottlieb, who already writes for Mill Media, and former Slate managing editor June Thomas who edit some stories and share her expertise with the team.
Stories have already been commissioned from Scottish journalists including freelances Dani Garavelli and Catriona Stewart, and Holyrood magazine writer Margaret Taylor.
The Bell will be Mill Media’s first new launch away from Substack, the newsletter platform on which the venture originally started in Manchester in 2020.
The Bell, as well as an as-yet unnamed sister title in London, are both launching on rival platform Ghost, where they are set to be joined by Mill Media’s four other titles, which also cover Sheffield, Liverpool and Birmingham, before the end of the year.
Mill Media to Glaswegians: ‘Give us a Bell’
Mill Media uses a paid subscription model and promises readers longer, deeper reads on their communities.
“Glasgow seems to be staring at its past, wondering where it is in the present and trying to reimagine a new future,” Armstrong said.
Lothian-McLean said The Bell wants “to tell the story of everyday people in Glasgow and reflect back at them a city that they recognise but might not see always portrayed in the media that they consume”.
The pair said upcoming stories will cover the city’s “fascination with bingo halls”, the last urban ferry on the River Clyde and “our uneasy relationship with Brutalism and high-rise flats”, adding that longer investigations will look at issues arising from events like the 2014 art school fire.
The publication’s name is inspired by the bell that appears in the city’s coat of arms and in the legend of Saint Mungo, Glasgow’s patron saint. Armstrong said it also alludes to an esteemed Irish literary journal of the same name. The brand’s logo aims to evoke the style of Glaswegian Art Nouveau architect and artist Charles Rennie Mackintosh.
Lothian-McLean said the pair plan to distribute tip cards around the city inviting Glaswegians to “give us a Bell”.
“We want to be out there talking to as many people as possible all the time,” she said.
“In a lot of modern journalism jobs you’ve got these amazing reporters who want to give their time to stories and they want the resources to do it… The luxury of time, and the luxury of resources, are much more scant than they were in the past, and that’s due to the shrinking landscape of journalism. We’re not only in a position, hopefully now, to do that ourselves, we’re also in a position where we can work with those journalists in Glasgow.”
Glasgow is not a news desert, already boasting titles including the Glasgow Times and Scottish national paper The Herald.
Armstrong said: “We don’t want to detract from what’s already going on in Glasgow. But we feel the approach that The Mill takes is a little bit different.”
[Read more: Scottish local news coverage mapped – All districts have at least one outlet]
Lothian-McLean added: “Any thriving city should have a thriving media landscape. The Bell isn’t there to try and compete in the same way – it wants to be part of Glasgow’s media landscape, and we’re just one seed in, repopulating, replanting what it used to have.”
Whereas Armstrong has spent almost half his life in Glasgow, Lothian-McLean moved to the city for her role at The Bell. She said she was “working with someone who knows it like the back of their hand, so I’m there as fresh eyes.
“I think that’s a good combination – you’ve got someone who’s so versed in a city and then you’ve got someone who can notice new things about a city that might seem so standard to people who live there.”
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