Doing news differently

Dear readers.

We’re now four months into what is, truth be told, a slightly mad venture. 

When Robbie founded The Bell, he was pretty confident it was something the city had space for. Two of the city’s biggest newspapers, the Daily Record and Glasgow Times, had long been bought by two of the UK’s biggest media groups — Reach PLC (The Record) and Newsquest (The Glasgow Times). Between them, these titans own more than half of the UK’s regional news titles. While many brilliant Glaswegian journalists still work for these papers, breaking essential news, alongside their work there’s been a surge in clickbait, celebrity stories, and pop-up ads that make articles borderline unreadable.

If you want to understand why that’s happened, you need to follow the money. And the money these days comes from one thing: clicks. More clicks = more cash. If you click an article and scroll past an ad, the site gets a couple of pennies. Should you be so intrigued as to what exactly doctors recommend doing every day to lose belly fat that you end up clicking the link, it’s more money again.

For a city of Glasgow’s significance and history, it felt like opportunities were being missed, particularly when it came to long-form journalism. There’s excellent output from independent media like The Ferret and Greater Govanhill, but these are national and hyper-local outlets respectively. What about more generalised, lengthier dives into Glasgow’s depths?

But the question of whether this was something the city needed was only one side of the coin. Was it something the city wanted? Would our eclectic mix of long reads, investigations, weekly roundups and profiles of local characters find favour? Or would we find ourselves quietly switching the website off, cancelling our office lease and sticking a “will write for cash” sign on our LinkedIn profiles?

The question felt even higher stakes for me, as someone who upped sticks and relocated their life to join Robbie for the ride. The opportunity to edit stories about a city as fascinating as Glasgow felt like the kind of opportunity that only comes along once or twice in a lifetime — I had to take it. But I went in with my eyes open. There was no guarantee it was a permanent gig.

Four months in, it’s still too premature to make a call. But it’s been long enough to see some early signs.

Firstly, there’s our reach. In just four months, we’ve already got to 7,500 people receiving these e-mails. That’s the equivalent of around 1% of the city’s population. It’s a huge encouragement, suggesting that yes, people here really do want to read the kind of different stories we put out. (If you think what we’re doing is valuable, then please tell your friends and share any articles you like on social media — it really helps us grow.)

But 7,500 is not the most important number. The number that haunts our sleepless hours and which every morning we plot out on the office whiteboard is a different one: our paying members. That number is currently standing at just over 400.

In the final analysis, this is the only number that ultimately matters. Because it determines whether we can keep going or not. We’re a tiny, tiny startup in a market dominated by a couple of massive companies. Put frankly, we're a David. Our Goliaths are Reach, run by the Glaswegian former CEO of Ladbrokes, or Newsquest, owned by an American mass media holding company called Gannett.

Our pockets aren’t as deep. Scottish journalists are some of the best in the world, but their labour needs proper remuneration. The only way we’ll avoid being swallowed up is if we can build up a committed core of people who think what we’re doing matters, and are willing to stand behind it.

And 400 is a great start, in just four months. (In fact, it’s given us the confidence to hire another reporter — a risk, but a calculated one.) But it’s quite a long way off what we need to be financially sustainable. We’ve set ourselves a big goal this year — to get to 1,000 members by the end of December. That would show we were on the right track, and that our brave enterprise wasn’t a flash in the pan but a permanent part of the Glasgow media ecosystem. The next big milestone is 500 — something we really want to hit by the spring.

So if you’ve been wondering about whether to join us, don’t do it for me, or for Robbie. We took our decisions, we live with the consequences. Instead, do it for your city. Putting our local news into the hands of big corporations hasn’t worked — and declining circulations, redundancies and a dilution of quality has been the result. We’re here to offer an alternative. If you think that’s what Glasgow needs, then join today.