![[Freelance]](../gif/fl3H.png)
Local features work
LONDON FREELANCE Branch hosted Joshi Herrmann, the founder of Mill Media, on 10 June. Mill Media has been described by John Burn-Murdoch, chief data reporter at the Financial Times, as one of the most interesting and impressive media start-ups of the last decade.
Joshi Herrmann on Zoom
It has received investment from CNN CEO and former BBC Director General Sir Mark Thompson. It publishes local journalism in Manchester, Birmingham, Liverpool and Sheffield – and, soon, London.
Founded by Joshi (pronounced “Yoshi”) as a local newsletter covering Greater Manchester, after just four years the Mill employs 11 staff writers and editors and is read by more than 100,000 email subscribers, funded by 7500 paying members as well as corporate sponsorship.
Joshi Herrmann: I started the Mill four years ago in Manchester – when it was just me writing a newsletter. I thought I would try a version of local journalism that was less about “news”, which I think we have too much of in our mix in UK media. The journalism I most enjoy reading is American-style magazine writing. I feel it gives a sense of depth and nuance and thoughtfulness about the topic. A big part of journalism should be giving people a sense of delight and entertainment and a sense of emotional connection to the place they live.
So, the Mill is trying to offer something different. So far, there’s been a good reception. There are 100,000 people on our free email lists across our four cities. Ninety-five percent of our revenue comes from paying subscribers, and that pays for all our costs. One day the story will be a deep dive into local politics in Manchester; a few days later it might be a very successful chicken shop that’s taken off, or the Muslim subculture around a particular place.
Instead of asking my writers to write three or four things a day, I ask them to write one story a week. And it’s generally 1000, 2000 or 3000 words, so they have a very different, remit and that really helps us. We’ve published freelance stories in all our titles, though most of our stories are by staff writers – I’d say every month on each of our titles we publish three or four freelance stories.
The Mill is coming to London
We’re launching a London title next. We’re hoping it will be later this year, so I’m seeking commissions. I’d love people here to pitch. At www.millmediaco.uk/write you’ll find a Google form where you can fill in the details of your pitch.
I believe in covering cities. Cities are an incredibly important part of the modern world and I think people who live in them tend to know very little about the people who live in the next neighbourhood or the people who live in the next street, so I think it’s very important to build connections and solidarity between people by doing high-quality journalism that covers the places they live.
Stand by your freelances
We defend stories if someone’s suing us – not that I’ve never had a legal threat relating to a story written by a freelance. When we’re threatened, we tell claimants that we will be defending the claim. I’ve never known a claimant to say, well, we’re going to go after the writer individually. I hope never to have to go to the High Court in a defamation case – but if we did of course we would defend a piece by a freelance in the same way we would defend one written by staff.
How the Mill pays contributors
Standard word rates reward stories that are fast to write. At the lowest end, for a theatre review we may pay £150 to £170. For a story about a neighbourhood or a controversy that involves speaking to a few people we might pay £300. We have a much larger budget for stories that are complicated and involve going to court or writing a really long piece. We can pay up to £2500 for, let’s say, 5000 words of that kind.
I’ve written for the Guardian, the Times, the Evening Standard, the Independent and the Spectator. The idea that journalists should be paid one fixed amount per word when some things involve three months of work is utter nonsense.
And I think that’s why we’ve ended up with this cesspit of opinion writing: hot take after hot take – because hot takes take an hour and the kind of stories we’re trying to commission take a lot longer.
The Press Gazette estimated that the number of local journalists employed by the large local media companies is down from 9000 to 3000 since 2007 – a cataclysmic drop. I sometimes go to local news websites and see stories that are clearly just a press release from the council, then one from the police. That is a very uncertain way to build a brand that people will pay for.
Inclusive
A member asked whether the Mill would welcome pitches from journalists, whose English might not be good but who specifically offer insights on for example migrant and asylum-seekers’ stories?
Definitely. I can’t think of a story that we’ve done with a refugee, but we ran a very powerful story by a 16-year-old girl who’d grown up in very tough circumstances in West Yorkshire. I paired her up with one of our staff writers: she gave all the material and then the writer shaped it. It turned into a successful story, even though the 16-year-old’s writing obviously wasn’t up to the standard that we would normally have.
The story of British news is that most of it is produced in London but very little of it consistently covers London. Even the London Evening Standard decided to take “London” out of the name of the paper.
There are neighbourhood stories in London. There are stories of different immigrant communities in London. There are stories about political malpractice and housing in London. I’d love your pitches.