A free local news magazine covering Staffordshire has ambitions to pay its two full-time staff salaries of £45,000 within 18 months of launch.
The Staffordshire Signal, a non-profit magazine, newsletter and website, launched in June 2025 in response to the decline of existing local news media (the Reach-owned Sentinel, Burton Mail and associated websites) CEO Jenna Goodwin told Press Gazette.
So far advertising revenue is covering printing and other costs with staff working for free.
[Read more: The non-profit publisher making local news pay in London]
“People don’t know the difference between a Borough Council, a parish council or county council,” said Goodwin. “So I wanted to counter the clickbait negativity of everything with just information…
“If you go online and you search for anything to do with Stoke-on-Trent, it’s just crackheads and potholes and it’s nothing like that.”
The monthly magazine is distributed for free in markets, coffee shops, independent shops and libraries. It contains features, promotional articles written by local businesses (not advertorials), top-ten lists and visiting guides. Much of the content is written by the public, said Goodwin, adding it reaches around 40,000 people a month through print and digital platforms (print circulation, website traffic, newsletter reader and wider social media channels).
Its weekly newsletter, relaunched on platform Ghost last month, is sent to more than 2,000 subscribers, containing updates on the business, six top news stories and a community events calendar.
Three-strong team on minimum wage in ‘month or two’
The Staffordshire Signal has three staff – two full-time including Goodwin, and one part-time intern.
In “a month or two”, Goodwin is hoping all three staff will be on a minimum wage salary, with this being increased to a £45,000 full-time salary by the end of the year.
The Signal makes 90% of its revenue from advertising, with 95% of that generated from print and 5% from a single banner advert on its website site.
The remaining income comes from voluntary subscriptions. Readers can pay £5 a month for home delivery of the print edition or £10 to “become a patron” and show extra support.
The magazine prints 10,000 copies per month at a cost of £18,000.
The Signal’s website features two to three stories a day, mostly “regurgitated press releases” but “clicks don’t matter if the clicks aren’t funding the advertising – the magazine is funding the advertising, the website just goes alongside it”, Goodwin said. Last month the website attracted around 12,100 unique visitors and 16,000 page views.
“When people are putting an advert in, they know it isn’t going to go and buy some corporate CEO in London a [Jaguar]. I think they know that the money’s going to stay in the local area,” she said.
Both Goodwin and her partner, the other full-time staff member, are not journalists but she has ambitions to recruit a reporter by the end of the year.
By the end of the year, the magazine wants to hire one full-time, seasoned journalist.
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