Dear readers — we hope you’re having a wonderful week so far. Usually, on a Wednesday, you’d receive a round-up of the day's news in your inbox first thing. The fact that it didn’t happen today may have left you feeling shocked, confused, even angry. We hope your Wednesday was able to recover from the setback. Therapy is available.
But let us explain. Today we’re sending you something different: an attempt to persuade you to sign up as a paying member. It’ll be very transparent, more of a begging bowl than the hand of a pickpocket, but if you have five minutes to spare we’d appreciate you hearing us out.
The Dispatch will soon be a year old. We set out to provide a new model for journalism in the West Midlands: one that puts the reader first, rather than advertisers. And it’s working — we’ve grown The Dispatch to such an extent that we’re in a position to look for a second hire (Kate loves The Dispatch dearly but she also occasionally loves having an evening doing something… else). We’ve also had some amazing coverage of late: The Observer recently asked whether the four-title company we’re part of, Mill Media, was THE FUTURE OF NEWS? (This was written in exciting block capitals).
We’ve also seen incredible growth on our free list (those members who have signed up to receive our free emails but not to pay for additional members-only content). We’re stunned that in less than a year we’ve amassed 18,000 readers in total.
Editions about the Custard Factory, the business dealings of Gurpaal Judge, and the criminal connections to Akhmed Yakoob brought us lots of new members as well as traction on social media. Some of these stories (like the one about Judge) were sent out to all 18,000 of our readers. Others, like the Custard Factory and Yakoob, only went to our paying members.
Of course, we’d have loved to send both of those editions to everyone, but there’s an unfortunate truth lurking behind all that we do: someone has to pay for it.
At the time of writing our free list is flying. It’s like the inverse of those graphs you see showing the stock market in 1929, or 2007. Our paid list, on the other, is growing, but more modestly. We’re up to 800-odd of you, which is great, but we’d love to hit the 1000 mark in the next couple of months if we can.
The reason we send out free editions every week is to ensure The Dispatch is accessible. We know that not everyone can afford to prioritise a local media subscription in times like these — those free editions will always be part of what we do. But the model only works if those of you who value what we do, and can afford to pay for it, consider doing so. All the lovely comments and kind emails we receive warm our hearts — but it’s the paying members who keep The Dispatch going. Without them, none of the pieces you’ve read and enjoyed would ever have been written. We would simply cease to be.
So that’s it: if you can’t afford to pay, not a problem, we’ve designed our model to ensure everyone can be part of The Dispatch regardless of how much surplus income they have. But if you can, we’d urge you to think hard about it. Local journalism that scrutinises our institutions while celebrating our region is so important. But it’s also slowly dying out in the UK. Help us keep it alive.
Best wishes,
Kate and the team behind The Dispatch
I'm very glad to have subscribed. And since subscribing, I've been finding other great reads on Substack, too. It's restored my faith in news and the internet. It's just so nice to find a corner of the internet that's not bombarded with adverts!
I am glad I subscribed and appreciate reading stories I can't anywhere else 👍