'Sacha Lord's pandemic money'

Dear Millers – what a beautiful weekend we're having. I promise to keep this email brief so that I don't detain you from enjoying the sun.

It's coming up to five years since I started The Mill (our birthday is on June 5th, please direct cakes and gifts to our newsroom), and from the beginning, I've sent you occasional editor's notes on a Sunday afternoon to mark big moments.

One of those notes was around this time last year, and it was a bit unusual: I was asking for your help, and in quite a practical sense. We were being threatened with a lawsuit by Andy Burnham's (now former) advisor Sacha Lord, and we needed your help to fight off his claims.

No such drama this weekend. In fact, I'm actually writing to tell you that our investigation into Lord's business Primary Events, and the £400,000 of public money it improperly obtained during the pandemic, has received some major recognition on a national level.

Keen readers of Private Eye will already know this, but for those who don't: our Lord reporting has been long listed for this country's most prestigious investigative journalism prize: Private Eye's Paul Foot Award for Investigative and Campaigning Journalism.

Here's what the listing says:

We've never had a story listed for this award before, which usually goes to major investigations from the national newspapers and whose judges this year include the FT's Janine Gibson and Guardian columnist and former Times editor Sir Simon Jenkins. Amazingly, it wasn't the only Mill Media story to be long listed: our sister publication The Post in Liverpool is also on the list for its work on the Big Help charity group. The winner will be announced in Private Eye next month.

Whether or not we win, I'm just incredibly proud of Jack, who led the reporting on Lord over many months, carrying on breaking new scoops about the story until the Arts Council announced early this year that it was asking for the money back, forcing Lord to resign from his position advising Burnham.

Jack will be embarrassed when he reads this, because he doesn't like it when I highlight him personally, but for him to be listed for an award like this at his age (somehow, he's still in his mid-twenties) is remarkable. He started writing for The Mill when he was still at university, and joined us on staff around three years ago, just after graduating. Since then he's worked on major investigations like this, but also produced wonderful pieces about the lives of Manchester's restaurant workers and delivery riders.

Working with journalists like Jack as they flourish from recent graduates into brilliant writers and reporters at The Mill has been one of the huge joys of doing this. The same goes for Mollie Simpson, whose reporting on the University of Greater Manchester this year has led to a police investigation and several mentions in parliament. Like Jack, Mollie joined us out of university and has become a huge star. In fact, she helped on the Lord story, as did several of our editors and student reporter helpers too.

Huge thanks to our paying members. By backing us, you've allowed us to back talented young journalists (not just Jack and Mollie, but Jack Walton and Ophira too), whose success is now getting national recognition and – more importantly – paying huge dividends for the city.