⌛ Less than 10 hours to go

Dear readers – the last few days have been crazy. Every time I look at our work messaging channel – which pings with a little celebratory alert when someone signs up – a dozen new members have joined us. When I woke up this morning, 20 new Millers had joined before 9am. We've flown past our campaign target of 1,000 new members and if we add another 60 before midnight, we will hit 1,200. Pretty amazing.

There are now less than ten hours left in our campaign. If you want to join us as a member and choose your price for your first two months, this is your last chance. Pick a price that you can afford and give yourself access to award-winning Manchester journalism by clicking below. You'll be joining an incredible community of Mancunians who really appreciate and support good writing and proper accountability.

On Thursday night, we won a British Journalism Award for our long-running investigation into the University of Greater Manchester. It's the biggest award we've ever won and I'm so proud that a tiny team working for a publication that didn't even exist before the pandemic has been recognised as doing the best local journalism in the country.

This year started with the businessman Sacha Lord having to resign from his role as an advisor to Andy Burnham because of investigative journalism published by The Mill, and the incredible support we got from our paying members, who backed us when Lord was threatening us with court action.

These stories show what you can achieve when give great journalists the time they need to work on stories rather than asking them to churn out a dozen pieces of "clickbait" a day. But as you know, the reason we can do this kind of journalism is because our business model supports it. When you get your income from paying members, you don't need to rely on online advertising revenue, which means you don't need to chase millions of eyeballs via high-volume low-quality publishing.

If you believe in what we're doing, and you think you think being a Mill member would give you some value in your life, helping you to be more informed and feel more connected to this city, then please join up now and help us end this campaign on a high. The button below will work until midnight.