Two years of The Tribune
Two years of The Tribune
This is just the beginning
Good morning readers — we hope you’re having a relaxing and enjoyable weekend.
Given how hectic editing a newspaper by myself is, sometimes I find it difficult to take a step back and look at the big picture.
However, this week something popped up on my Facebook to remind me of an important milestone. This time two years ago, The Tribune had just started its subscription service. We had been publishing stories for a few months already, slowly increasing our output to four newsletters a week to show readers what they would be getting if they signed up as paying members.
But on 6 July, 2021, we opened up memberships for the first time. It was a nervous moment, and I had no idea whether anyone would support us financially or not. Around six weeks earlier I had left a secure if uninspiring job at The Star for a brand new newsletter which had only one member of staff — me. It was a leap into the unknown and, while I felt strongly that journalism could be more than celebrity tittle-tattle and clickbait, I didn’t know for sure.
That day we got 73 subscribers, which was a good start. By the end of the first week we were almost at 250 and I was starting to feel more confident I’d made the right decision. Since then it’s been slow but steady progress to our more recent milestone of 1,500 paying members. Just two years in, that’s a pretty amazing level of support.
In the last two years we’ve published stories on almost every aspect of life in Sheffield and South Yorkshire, from politics to the environment and arts and culture to sport. Some of my favourites include this piece I wrote about an illegal rave that kept half of Sheffield awake one night earlier this year. There was also this story by David Bocking about the people bringing spring back to Kinder Scout. And I think this essay by Jack Chadwick about the working-class Sheffield author Len Doherty is probably the best piece we’ve ever published.
As a direct result of the amazing support you’ve given us, we’ve recently been able to expand. After two years we finally have our second full time member of staff, and I have some much-needed help! Victoria Munro has joined us from the Waltham Forest Echo in London where she was the editor and also specialised in investigative journalism. We’re already beginning to see our output improve, with more variety and more newsier content to go alongside our great environmental, cultural and narrative journalism.
Do we stop there? Are we happy to just have two journalists covering the great city of Sheffield? I’m not. I want The Tribune to provide for Sheffield what it used to have: dedicated political writers and theatre critics; specialist housing journalists and reporters covering the crime beat. If you think Sheffield needs and deserves that, please consider becoming a paying member today. It costs just £1.34 a week (23p a day) if you pay upfront for a year.
Many thanks
Dan Hayes
Editor, The Tribune