The power of a growing team

Dear all — in the past week, hundreds of new Millers have joined our mailing list thanks to our appearances in the Observer and on Radio 4.

Rachel Cooke’s great long read is an interesting exploration of what we do, why people have responded so well to our journalism and why new ideas are so badly needed in local media. I loved reading thoughts from my colleagues Sophie, Daniel, Victoria and Dan in the piece, all of whom have been huge contributors to our growth. Most pleasingly, Cooke was also very complimentary about the aesthetics of Mill HQ, listing some of my best Facebook Marketplace buys: “Squashy sofas, battered dark wood desks, standard lamps with tasselled shades”.

On Radio 4’s Broadcasting House, I had a great discussion about the importance of local journalism with the show’s host Paddy O'Connell and the legendary magazine editor Tina Brown, the former chief of Vanity Fair and the New Yorker. The highlight of the show was Brown describing what we’re doing as “pioneering” and saying it reminds her of her late husband Harry Evans, perhaps the greatest British newspaper editor of modern times. The lowlight was my spontaneous description of mainstream media companies treating online readers like “traffic pigs”, an appalling image to put into the minds of hundreds of thousands of listeners on a Sunday morning.

One thing noted by both Cooke and O'Connell is that we are on a big hiring surge. In fact, applications for four of the roles we are looking to fill (three in London, one in Manchester) close tonight, so please get your applications in this evening in the breaks between the men's 100m final and the women’s water polo. You’ll see on our hiring page that we are also looking for a staff writer, an ad sales manager and a social and video expert in the next couple of months too.

Those roles, and the recent media interviews we’ve done, hopefully give a sense of how we are hoping to grow and develop in the months ahead. We are significantly strengthening our team here in Manchester by adding more reporting capacity and trying to give our stories a wider impact on social media, while also taking our model to new places where we think it will be effective. Both those moves will make the company stronger and will allow us to bring you a range and depth of journalism that we haven’t been capable of in the past.

Let me give you an example. The story we published recently about a semi-detached property in Harpurhey that was bought for £1.8 million in July 2020 having been bought for £575,000 earlier the same day, is not the sexiest kind of journalism you can do. Unlike our reporting on Sacha Lord, it was not cited in the Observer piece and it’s kind of difficult to capture in a pithy one-line summary.

But despite that, it’s the sort of reporting I want us to do more of. A story like that helps readers to understand a complex and poorly understood area of public policy: the mechanics of how the most vulnerable people in society are looked after, and the perverse rules that mean private property companies can extract huge profits from this badly regulated market.

The story was only possible because a team of reporters across three of our cities has been getting to grips with this murky world for almost a year now, resulting in major stories published on The Mill and our sister publications in Birmingham and Liverpool, pieces that have been cited in national newspapers like the Financial Times. Our team’s investigation has exposed a property entrepreneur from Wolverhampton whose companies promised to support vulnerable people but went bust last year owing £13m and a major charity group in Liverpool where millions of pounds have turned up on the balance sheets of private companies owned by charity trustees.

We’ve had to learn a lot about the devilishly complex world of “exempt accommodation” and how it has enriched people who seem to have little interest in the welfare of the people they were promising to help, including women who had suffered domestic violence, homeless people and prison leavers. That kind of investigative journalism requires sustained investment and collaboration between multiple journalists, and I’m so encouraged by how it’s begun to bear fruit.

In the past week, our focus has naturally turned to the rioting that has taken hold in the wake of the mass stabbing in Southport. Again, having a team spread across various cities has been a huge help, with our reporters in Liverpool able to brief colleagues in Manchester and Sheffield on what to look out for at these violent protests because they covered them first. Jack Walton’s outstanding piece about witnessing the Southport riot up close has rightly received huge plaudits. Tomorrow, our Sheffield title The Tribune will be publishing a first-hand account of today’s frightening riot in Rotherham by my colleague Dan Hayes, who has just got home after watching thugs trying to burn down a hotel housing asylum seekers.

I’ve been writing these editor’s notes for four years now, usually on Sunday afternoon when I’ve had some time to think about what we’re doing and what we can do next. Things have changed a lot in that time. When I wrote the first ones, there were a few thousand of you on the list and we certainly weren't getting profiled in the Observer or Radio 4. Now there are more than 50,000 of you getting this email and our journalism is having a serious impact.

I hope what that shows people is that this approach works. There are a million ways you can spend your money, but the 3,000+ people who have chosen to become Mill members (and the 8,000+ in total who have subscribed to one of our titles) have backed a team and a method that is getting results. Based on the membership income we get every month, we’ve assembled an incredibly strong team who can unpick complicated financial schemes, report bravely and thoughtfully in moments of public disorder and also write the kind of people-centred Mill features that give readers a sense of pride and hope.

Thanks to everyone for reading, and a special thanks to our members, who are the bedrock of this whole enterprise. To our new readers — and to those of you who appreciate what we’re doing and want to back us in the months ahead — please consider clicking that pink button below to join up.