The Mill is Greater Manchester’s new quality newspaper - delivered by email
Join the 14,000+ readers on our mailing list to get good writing, useful local information and thoughtful reporting in your inbox every week for free. You can also become a paying member to support us and get all our newsletters.
Founded in June 2020, The Mill is for people who want a new kind of local news and don’t have the patience for pop-up ads and endless scrolling on social media. Our newsletters recommend local events, keep you up to date on what’s happening in Greater Manchester and investigate important stories in politics, education, business and culture. Read some of our best long reads here.
We believe in the power of proper reporting and good writing rather than chasing clicks, and we particularly focus on giving our readers the context they need to understand what’s really going on. We know people are inundated with information so we purposely focus on offering quality rather than quantity. Join our list now.
How it works
Some of our journalism is free. Just sign up to our mailing list below and you will get one original story from us every week, plus our Monday news briefing which rounds up the most important stories in Greater Manchester and recommends great things to do.
Mill members get everything we publish. They pay £7-a-month (or just £1.40 a week if they subscribe for a year) and receive our stories in their inboxes 5 days a week. Members also join our discussion threads, contribute to our reporting and support our growth as we build a new home for high-quality journalism in Greater Manchester.
Click the button below to join our free mailing list or become a paying member of The Mill
“Barely a year old, it’s already better than any local newspaper in Britain.” — Will Lloyd, Unherd
“A great read. Subscribe, fellow Mancunians.” — Michael Rawlinson QC, Mill member
“The Mill is a great idea. Just the kind of local journalism I want to read — intelligent, trustworthy and insightful.” — Jon Connell, founder of The Week magazine
“This is brilliant! If you miss real, well-researched journalism without sensationalism and all the clickbait, have a read.” — Paula Wallen, Mill reader
The story behind The Mill
The Mill was launched during the lockdown by me, Joshi Herrmann, to give Greater Manchester a different kind of news coverage. I have worked as a journalist for a decade, including reporting for The Times, The Guardian, The Independent, The Telegraph and The Evening Standard (you can find a few of my stories here). Now we have a team of three staff journalists in the office and a brilliant network of freelance contributors, including some of the best writers in the North.
The Mill is my attempt to find a new business model for local news. Local journalism has been devastated in recent years, with thousands of reporters laid off and newsrooms badly depleted. I hope this project can be part of the fightback. (Read my piece about what’s gone wrong in local news).
The Mill is funded by its readers via a paid membership program. For the price of a couple of pints per month, paying members receive original reporting from us daily rather than weekly. They also join our community, including being part of our members’ discussion group and being invited to our meetups (once that is allowed again). The Mill’s members are supporting the growth of a new type of journalism in Greater Manchester, allowing us to take on more reporting and hire local journalists.
Please join them as founding members by clicking the button below.
Read some of our stories
You can find our first stories on our homepage here, and here are some good ones to read:
A gripping piece about “idealism, secrets and paranoia” in Burnage Garden Village.
A feature about the life of James Watkins, a fugitive slave who came to Bolton and Manchester in the 1850s.
An interview with a food delivery rider about his extraordinary journey to Manchester from Sudan.
And in-depth pieces about how Manchester property is sold to overseas investors, the way Miles Platting is changing and a ‘neighbourhood war’ over ridding streets of cars.
Members-only stories:
A crime piece from the crown courts about the “very peculiar case” of a Manchester man convicted of texting underage girls.
Didsbury, Sale, Worsley? A model predicts the winners and losers from the move to remote work
Palazzo Manchester: We dig through the archives to explain why Manchester has so many Italian-looking buildings.
Our interview with Sir Richard Leese about why Greater Manchester is trying to finally dismantle Margaret Thatcher’s deregulation of buses.
You can follow The Mill on Twitter, on Facebook, and on Instagram.
The Mill @ManchesterMill
Today's briefing, with a cartoon by @tonyhusband1, recommended stories in @TheBoltonNews, @mcrmeteor, @themancunion and @MENnewsdesk, and things to do from @HOME_mcr, @mcrwire and @FootballMuseum. https://t.co/CTdshD2L0QGet in touch
If you have a story that you think we should know about, please do get in touch by emailing editor@manchestermill.co.uk. It could be something that needs to be investigated, but it could also be an amazing human story about someone in Greater Manchester whose life deserves more attention.
If your story is sensitive, we will handle it with care. We are very used to dealing with confidential sources, and will never reveal the identity of contact unless they explicitly agree to their name appearing. If you want to use an encrypted email, we have a Protonmail address: milleditor@protonmail.com.
How can I help The Mill?
The Mill is funded by subscription revenue from our members. The more we get, the faster we can become sustainable and start to grow our team. If you are interested in joining us as a member, just click here.
If you like the idea of what we are doing, please tell your friends and forward them the link to this page, so they can sign themselves up, or use the button below
The Mill @ManchesterMill
Resolve to be better informed this year. Join The Mill as a member today to get all of our great writing and in-depth reporting on Greater Manchester ✨ https://t.co/k35hrFA0HY https://t.co/CYtPsuL2Ep
The Mill @ManchesterMill
A special treat to start the week: Our first ever Mill cartoon, by the legendary @tonyhusband1. He's had a strip in Private Eye since the 1980s, and now he's drawing for us too. Starting with this one... https://t.co/hV7EYdu9sIWrite for The Mill
The Mill has a network of brilliant freelance contributors. We are constantly on the lookout for great journalists, whether they are in the first year of their career or the 50th year. Our best pieces have been written both by people who have bylines in the New York Times and The Guardian, and writers who are still studying.
We value compelling writing, good scoops and writers who like wandering around forgotten neighbourhoods and hanging out in old boozers to find out what’s really going on in peoples’ lives. If you would like to write for The Mill, please read our pitching guide. It tells you everything you need to know about how to pitch and what we are looking for.
Every six months we take on a new trainee — usually a journalism student who joins us for the required placement on their course and does one day a week in our office. If you’d like to be our next trainee, email joshi@manchestermill.co.uk with links to your best stories and ideas you’d like to report for The Mill.
If you have other ideas or skills you would like to contribute to help us grow, please email editor@manchestermill.co.uk. And we are always looking for people who have email lists in Greater Manchester and who are willing to tell their lists about us to spread the word. If that’s you, please get in touch.
The Mill @ManchesterMill
Morning update🌅 Case rates are falling fast in GM and nationally. Here are the changes vs the week before: Greater Manchester: 309 👇 20% North West: 407 👇 24% England: 369 👇 24% This afternoon we will post the latest local hospital and vaccine data. https://t.co/CNwdBeA6NN
The Mill @ManchesterMill
He went to WHSmith at the Arndale Centre one lunchtime and bought three pads of lined paper. On them, writing in pencil, he created Jack Reacher - and one of the biggest book franchises on earth. Today's brilliant long read is by @drheathermartin. https://t.co/7U9k5n0lIZ