125 down, 875 to go

Dear Millers — we’re one day into our membership campaign, and it’s going nothing short of swimmingly. I do not use the term lightly.

Have a look on our website: we’re more than a tenth of the way to our goal of welcoming 1,000 new members and it’s only been 24 hours.

125 members have joined so far, and you can help sign up even more by sharing the campaign now. Don't forget: new members can join for a price they choose for their first two months during this campaign.

Most of those new members have come from Millers signing up friends by sending them the link to our site or sharing on social media.

"Some of the best money I've spent in the last few years," said Charlie Ball wisely on Bluesky. "Help be part not just of some of the best journalism around, but a reinvention of local news at a time when it is most needed."

"I have been a subscriber of @ManchesterMill for a while - great investigative journalism for my home city of Manchester and their new six pledges will help make it a better place," posted Phil Clarke on X.

"I value quality journalism," wrote Niall Power on LinkedIn, "So in terms of Greater Manchester, that definitely means the Mill."

And Ciaron Wilkinson shared Joshi's LinkedIn post by saying: "I’m coming up to my third year as a Mill subscriber and would encourage anybody really interested in what’s going on in Manchester to do the same. For less than the price of a cup of coffee per week you get in-depth long form reporting on things you’ll find other publications breeze over or don’t cover at all."

You may well have seen myself (Ophira), Grace, Maisy and Jacks One and Two cutting about Manchester yesterday like 12-year-old paper boys with our stacks of print editions of The Mill.

But if you didn’t catch us, and would like your very own print copy, you can find them in a series of similarly-named cafes around Deansgate (Federal, Fort, Factory — this was unintentional), or in a number of hot spots around South Manchester (including Chorlton Bookshop, Chorlton Library, and Stretford Library, thanks to the kind efforts of Miller Niall Power).

We’ll also continue handing them out over the next few weeks, and will keep you posted on our whereabouts via our Instagram. If you yourself would like to help with the handing-out efforts, get in touch.

But the print editions are only one small part of this campaign. The main goal is, of course, to gain a whole new 1,000 members, and to turn the Mill's Main Question from ‘Have you heard of The Mill?’ (said with genuine interest) to ‘Haven’t you heard of The Mill?’ (said with moderate disdain).

You can help us achieve this goal, naturally, by banging on about us to anyone who’ll listen, or otherwise by sharing some nice posts about us on social media. You can also generate your own referral link below, to keep track of how many people you’ve signed up. Dozens of members have already started using their links.

If one in three of our subscribers convince just one person to become a fellow Miller, we’ll have more than surpassed our goal.

If we hit our target, we’re going to fulfill a set of pledges that were chosen by you. The pledges are our attempt to make Manchester a better place in 2026 — a city where people are better informed, where young people get access to good quality information and where good news is celebrated. 

We told you about them yesterday and we'll have more details in the coming days. For now, please craft your most persuasive WhatsApp messages and help us march past 200.