Local journalism by subscription: How Mill Media provides quality local news across England

“Would people actually pay for high quality local journalism?” That was the question Joshi Herrmann wanted to test  in 2020, when he started the Mill, a small publication on Substack, providing targeted,  in-depth reporting on local happenings in Manchester. 

For 9 months, he relied on himself and occasional freelancers to build up an audience that would engage with his newsletters, come back and pay to receive more news. Herrmann – who’d worked for legacy outlets in England for a decade – knew he was going for a gamble: the Mill competed with bigger outlets, who spent a lot on online advertising and garnered thousands of views every day. Yet, around a year and a half since starting with his own savings, Herrmann was able to make the publication fully sustainable through reader subscriptions. And  the Mill is thriving today – the paper has local publications in Manchester, Birmingham, Liverpool and Sheffield.

All four papers have recently reached a total of 100 thousand people on the reading list, 7 thousands of which are paying for the papers, making them fully sustainable.

What’s the recipe behind the Mill’s success? Herrmann says he had to make several important choices. 

Quality over quantity

“Media companies that focus on scale mainly care about getting page views and therefore, they don’t care loads about each individual article,” Herrmann told The Fix. “My concept was to have a small number of articles, but very high quality.” 

From the start, the Mill published long, 2-thousand-word breakdowns on local news. Accompanied with data and analysis. Herrmann thought the audience for such material would be relatively small,  but engaged enough to come back.

“When you are a new publication, you have to focus on a smaller audience,” he said. “And I think subscriptions incentivise you to focus on a smaller group and build a relationship with them.”

Within a few months from founding, the Mill’s newsletter had four thousand people on the email list and 400 paid subscribers – the readers’ response proved that there was demand for local news in the area. So, the Mill doubled down on maintaining and expanding the subscription base. 

A personal touch 

One approach Herrmann takes to maintaining and growing the readership is limiting online advertising – he says he advertised on Meta’s platforms in the early days of The Mill, but switched to organic sharing  as soon as he could afford it. 

“About half of [our subscribers] come from [readers] sharing articles with other people and recommending that they should sign up for the Mill.” Herrmann said. “And that’s why maintaining the quality of journalism is so important.”

Herrmann also made sure to represent his staff in newsletters and introduce them to the subscribers. 

“[You’ve got to] tell readers about yourself and your reporters. People love to know who they are,” he told the Fix. “They like to feel like they know who’s writing,” Herrmann explained how the Mill includes personal titbits of reporters’ holidays or hobbies in newsletters. 

The Mill’s newsletters go out 4 times a week. They include a news summary for each city  at the top and then offer narrative or analytical pieces about ongoing things. Herrmann says the Mill does not use any other ways of keeping readers engaged.

“We don’t do any tricks, like giving people free products or whatever, ” he told The Fix. “We just try and make sure the journalism is good.” Of course, Herrmann says, some subscribers choose to cancel from time to time, but the Mill has been on a growing spree for the past few years. 

Cooperation

The growth of the Mill in Manchester attracted some outside attention to Herrmann’s enterprise. He told the Fix that both colleagues and potential investors were watching how his business model would succeed. 

“There are a lot of people in journalism, who want to see some success in local [news,]” he said. “It is such a difficult area with a lot of negativity, so people want to see some positivity.”

Once the Mill became sustainable in Manchester, people started reaching out to Herrmann, offering to recreate his vision in other urban areas in England. In most cases it was private investors like Mark Thompson who themselves had worked with legacy media, like The New York Times, The Economist and Axios. 

With this push of support the Mill expanded to Birmingham, Liverpool and Sheffield, employing local writers and using the same system of subscriptions to fund themselves. The cost of subscription varies from city to city, between £7 and £8.90   (€8.20 an d€10.40)  per monthper month. As of now, the Mill employs 12 staff writers and has a network of freelance contributors. The publication boasts seven thousand paid subscribers across the four cities, though the biggest bulk of contributors remains in the Greater Manchester area. 

The Fix asked Herrmann if he believes these numbers could be replicated outside of England. He said there are limitations to the subscription model, as it’s best suited for larger cities with universities, lots of companies and a population doing professional work. 

“I think it would be difficult to do this model in a rural or a poorer area, because you might not have the [demographic] numbers you need. ” he told the Fix. “If you, let’s say, need two thousand or five thousand people to become sustainable, you know you can’t have that in places where people are lower income.”

Despite the limitation, Herrmann encourages local news organisations to put readers first and include sustainability into their business models from the start. 

“I think it’s so important to be able to pay for yourself, rather than relying on grants, ” he said. “I know, there are great media companies that rely on grants and that’s not a bad thing, but what happens when you get a grant, spend it for two years, and when it runs out, your readership still does not pay for your cost? I think all media organisations should think really hard about what happens after outside funding stops.” 

For now, the Mill’s four publications are self-sufficient. Herrmann says he would love to expand the model to more places, but first, the Mill aims to perfect its craft in existing locations, by offering richer and more diverse reporting. 

“You know, there’s plenty of work to do, Herrmann said, “But it’s just nice that people are willing to pay for it and people are willing to support this kind of journalism.”

Source of the cover photo: The Mill’s Jack Dulhanty, Mollie Simpson and Joshi Hermann in the outlet’s Manchester office (Credit – Dani Cole)

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