Kate’s pioneering move
Online news website Birmingham Dispatch is celebrating its first birthday. Here, editor Kate Knowles (pictured) reviews its progress.
“A year ago I was in the grips of anxiety — I was about to press publish on the first ever Dispatch article. Would readers like it? Would anyone even see it? Or would it get lost in the mists of the internet, the digital equivalent of a tumbleweed.
For those of you who have never heard of me or my paper, I’ll give you a quick rundown. I launched The Birmingham Dispatch on 1 November last year after leaving my job at the Birmingham Mail (Birmingham Live as it’s known these days). For much of the past year, I was The Dispatch’s only full-time employee — but that didn’t mean I was alone. The Dispatch has several siblings dotted around the country: The Mill in Manchester, The Tribune in Sheffield, The Post in Liverpool and The Dispatch are all part of the Mill Media family. You may have seen that we now have two new members: The Bell in Glasgow and The Londoner in the capital both launched last month. It’s an incredibly exciting time for us all.
My colleagues and I do the work we do because we are all fed up to the back teeth of our cities being poorly represented by their established local papers. That’s not to say that no good journalism is being produced by historic titles like The Mail (just take a look at their recent work covering child poverty for evidence of that), but that these once trusted brands have been coopted by huge media conglomerates like Reach PLC. Reach is all too happy to pressure their journalists to write up to 10 stories a day, preferring quick turnarounds that can be rewritten to reach new and wider online audiences. As Birmingham Press Club members will be all too aware, local journalism is not meant for audiences far and wide, it’s meant to be local. Simply put, we don’t see why readers should accept that their once trusted news source is more interested in endless articles about Philip Schofield, than stories about Birmingham.
At The Dispatch, we currently publish four issues a week that get delivered straight to our readers' email inboxes. These include four, high quality articles — with a focus on long reads with lots of in-depth analysis and fun stories about unusual aspects of life in Birmingham and the West Midlands. Roughly half of our stories are free to access along with recommendations for things to do in the city, round ups of key news stories and spotlights on interesting figures in the community and the arts. These go out to our 21,000 free subscribers.
For full access, 972 members pay £8 a month. It’s rewarding work — but that does not mean it’s always been an easy ride. Leaving your somewhat reliable job, as I did, to put blood, sweat and tears into starting a new publication is a frightening thing. All new media, whether it’s national publications like Tortoise or UnHerd, or local ones like The Dispatch, have to put a lot of effort into persuading readers to become paying subscribers.
That’s just how things are today, but you know what? I would not have it any other way. By having our main source of funding come directly from our own readers, we are accountable to them and them alone. Instead of persuading brands to give us money so that we can plaster our website with annoying pop-up ads, we are motivated to publish quality writing. Thankfully, that’s what we enjoy doing the most. We have broken stories, like when we revealed that a property developer was not telling the whole truth about its plans for the beloved Electric Cinema. We scrutinised hopeful MPs during the general election and have even been nominated for a British Journalism Award for our ongoing investigation into Gurpaal Judge, a housing entrepreneur whose company left many vulnerable tenants in the lurch when it went into liquidation.
As The Dispatch turns one, I could not be happier with our progress, plus I now have my new, full time colleague, the journalist Samuel McIlhagga to join me on this journey. Here’s to more quality reporting and, hopefully, a future as long lasting as the Birmingham Press Club’s. Now, back to work.”
