"Disgustingly good fun" - Tales from the London newsletter providing hope in local news
Bad news on SLAPPs, Good news from Reform UK, MyLondon campaign and HullLive appeal
Hello,
We’ve had a busy week - we did a Sunday special with the best of the local election coverage which you can read here and then on Tuesday a deep dive into what newsrooms can expect from Reform UK after a second year of strong local election results.
Today we’re back with our regular weekly email, a day after listening in to a session at News Rewired, run by JournalismUK, all about being a creator in the local news market. Jim Waterson, editor of London Centric, shared a lot about his journey from The Guardian to creating a newsletter with 5,000 paying subscribers.
That’s our main read at the end - but first a round-up of some of the things which have happened in local news this week.
Thanks for reading
Behind Local News
This week in local news
💂♀️ The Government has ignored appeals to help reign in the use of legislation to stop legitimate reporting from seeing the light of day.
There was no mention of Anti-SLAPP protections in the King’s Speech, despite repeated promises of action from the Government, and a high-profile campaign from local editors about the damage Strategic Lawsuits Against Public Participation have.
Sayra Tekin, general counsel at the News Media Association, said: “We are disappointed that the government has not used the King’s Speech to take forward its longstanding and widely supported commitment to legislate against SLAPPs. A suitable legislative vehicle must now be identified as a matter of priority.
“The government is right to support effective and timely CMA decision-making, but not at the expense of the regulator’s independence. It must also reaffirm support for robust and rapid implementation of the Digital Markets Unit regime.
“For the government’s competition objectives to be effective, its proposed ‘Growth Duty’ for regulators must promote long-term, sustainable growth for UK businesses, not short-term gains for dominant platforms. Any legislation for AI sandboxes must safeguard the UK’s gold standard copyright framework and the value of trusted journalism.”
We covered the Anti-SLAPP campaign a few weeks ago here.
🗳️ Amid the concerns about Reform UK’s conduct towards local journalists, a possible good news story.
Jane Haynes, politics and people editor at BirminghamLive, wrote on Linkedin: “For what it’s worth, Reform UK in Birmingham have been open and engaging, including when challenged about councillor behaviour. We also got interviews from the counts with several of their candidates. It’s early days of course but frankly we have had issues for years with other parties who have been just as, if not more, controlling.
“The Labour Party here in Brum have exercised a lot of control over councillors and gagged them frequently. Just wanted to comment to say all parties jn this climate have a desire to filter what members/councillors say.”
👏 Iconic Media announced this week it was to hire 50 journalists as it seeks to better links its titles with the communities they serve.
Under the name ‘Project 50′, it is looking to recruit new editors, news editors, reporters and multimedia content producers across its portfolio of local and regional titles.
Chief publishing officer Martin Little said: “We are building locally rooted teams of content producers who are comfortable working across multiple platforms and formats.”
Details of the jobs on offer can be found on the HoldTheFrontPage.
🌳 MyLondon have launched the ‘Wasted’ project, to report the environmental disasters going unchecked, and remind those in power of the importance of tackling the long-term threats over short-term cost saving.
MyLondon Editor, Deanne Blaylock, said: “Through our Wasted campaign, MyLondon is drawing a line in the sand. It is simply unacceptable that in a world-class city, raw sewage is still being routinely pumped into our rivers, and precious resources are haemorrhaging through broken, leaky infrastructure. These aren’t just abstract climate concepts happening on the other side of the world; they are immediate blights on our local communities, ecosystems and health that demand urgent, uncompromising action from those in power.
You can keep up to date with MyLondon’s reporting on the Wasted tag page.
🚑 HullLive has urged councils across the UK to follow in the footsteps of a ‘trailblazing’ initiative to turn binmen into heroes on the road.
Life-saving defibrillators are set to be fitted on all bin collection lorries across the East Riding of Yorkshire. Hannah Corken, Executive Editor for the Humber region, who is spearheading the campaign, said: “We are urging other UK councils to consider doing something like this - There is nothing more valuable than a life.”
Hull Live reporter Deborah Hall spoke to the binmen making a difference to explain more.
🏢 Toby Granville, editorial transformation director at Newsquest, is returning to the editor’s chair at the Bournemouth Echo after over a decade away from the role.
Toby announced his move earlier this week, saying: “I’m relishing the opportunity to get back into the editor’s chair and returning to my first love — journalism.”
Newsquest has announced Richard Porritt, currently editor of the Eastern Daily Press, will become the group’s editorial transformation director.
Richard said: “Local journalism matters more than ever. I’m really looking forward to working with colleagues across Newsquest as we strive to serve our audiences even better, whilst staying true to the values of great reporting.”
“A disguisting amount of fun” - inside the the “media experiment” which paid off
The editor of one of the UK’s breakthrough local news newsletters belives his work now has more influence than ever before - despite being read by far fewer people than when he was at Buzzfeed then The Guardian.
Jim Waterson, speaking at the News Rewired conference in London this week, was asked about how he secured access now he was no longer working for an established brand, having left the Guardian in 2024 to set up London Centric.
He said: “I write for fewer people than ever but have more influence and access than when I worked at either the Guardian or Buzzfeed.
“People know our stories are read, and appear elsewhere, and if they don’t get it right with us, it’ll appear on the BBC the next day and they won’t be happy.
“Some of the people who read are at the top of the Treasury. What they read helps shape policy.”
The London Centric success story is one which should give many in local news hope. Since launching in September 2024, it has gone from strength to strength, with a free subscriber base of 50,000, and 5,000 people paying to subscribe.
At the time of launch, Jim wrote on London Centric: “London Centric is a project that will succeed or fail based on whether people are willing to pay. There are no shadowy financiers involved. No foreign state is paying the bills. Every penny we get from subscribers pays for journalism.”
It clearly is working, as Jim told News Rewired: “We had 6, 12, 18 month and 3 year targets and hit them after just three months.
“Most of it was word of mouth. We got scoops, they were shared, and we got more sign ups. We got more scoops, and then more sign ups. And then we used some of the money to get someone to help us do video, which led to more sign ups.
“The only metric I look at is paying subscribers. That’s the one which matters.”
That success has enabled Jim to employ others around him to work on London Centric.
Asked why he left the Guardian to ‘go it alone’ - the theme of the session Jim spoke at - he said: “In 2019, at the Guardian, I was part of a project where we recorded the screens of people in the general election to see what they were viewing. It was mainly mainstream media.
“In 2024, we repeated it and it was mainly short-form video, creators and a few mainstream stories. It was terrifying.
“I took voluntary redundancy from the Guardian and set up London Centric, partly to fill a gap and partly as a big media experiment.”
The shift from working in a big newsroom to leading a brand by yourself can’t be overstated.
Jim said: “I’m founder, editor, chief reporter, chief finance officer - whatever i choose to call myself on the day.
“I work from 6am to midnight, having a break to pick up the kids from school, cook them some pasta, and then I start again.
“I work 80 hours a week and don’t get a holiday. The number of stories I’ve written from beside a pool. There is no-one to cover if you don’t. It’s been a lot of stress.
“I shrink everything done by a big newsroom down and I do it myself, and work crazy hours. But it’s disgustingly good fun.”
London Centric has become known for the stories it breaks. Examples Jim gave were investigations into the safety of Lime Bikes in the city, dodgy landlords, and snail farming in commercial properties - the latter of which Jim said there was a discussion ongoing about TV rights for.
Jim said: “Our investigations pay. We have a small team and we do things on a shoestring. There is no AI. A human take with stories from London
“People buy into it because they want to support the project. That’s hard to do but we have done it.
“The thing that really works is when there is a human delivering original content that people cannot get anywhere else.
“I think this is because we’re doing original story telling that goes in the top of the funnel and people see that, and others use it. That has more impact than a newsroom of 30 who are churning out 20 stories a day each.”
“We have to obsess on readers. I sneak in what I care about but in a way they will find interesting. It’s like going into the pub and listening to someone talk about something you’re not interested in, but if they tell it in an interesting way, you’ll listen.
Also on the panel was Daniel Ionescu, the founder of one of the original hyperlocal news sites, The Lincolnite, which he wound up in 2024 after 12 years, and Isabelle Roughol from Democracy for Sale. All three stressed the importance of not trying to be everywhere.
Explaining why he focused on the newsletter ahead of video, Jim said: “People will pay for words. People don’t really pay for video. We got three million views from one video and made £146. That’s not going to cover the nursey fees, which is what I obsess about at the oment. The reach does not reflect in revenue.
“Less is certainly more. People have told me they are minded to cancel if I send them too much, that they are paying to only receive stuff once or twice a week.”
“And we always go the extra mile,” he added, citing the case of an investigation into big brand restaurants sub contracting work to local takeaways when people order via delivery apps. The job wasn’t done until the burger they’d ordered had been tasted, tested and photographed.
Listening to audiences was a point made by Isabelle, who also encouraged people starting out not to give up too quickly, saying that many creators got disheartened quickly, adding that listening to feedback can help you move quickly in the right direction.
Since closing down the Lincolnite, Daniel has launched Millennial Masters, a YouTube series. He cautioned how replicable the London Centric model was elsewhere in the UK.
He said: ”I launched the Lincolnite after leaving university because I thought we could do better than the existing daily newspaper and we proved it with journalists, storytelling, at the right time.”
That newspaper, the Lincolnshire Echo, still exists, albeit as a weekly now, with a website covering the whole of the county. Lincolnshire continues to support brands operated by Reach, Iconic Media and Iliffe Media.
Reflecting on the opportunities for independent local media outside London, Daniel said: “London can sustain this with 7 million people, places like Lincoln cannot sustain an independent newsrooms with a handful of journalists doing original storytelling.
“You have to work with others to break through. In 2026, it’s not enough to say we’ll build it, and they will come.”
Although London Centric does appear to be a strong example of journalism selling itself, and ultimately paying for itself, and remaining true to itself in the process.