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A local democracy reporter has left his local daily to lead an independent publisher’s expansion into the cities he covers.
Kate Knowles, pictured, announced the launch of the Birmingham Dispatch after leaving the Birmingham Mail last month.
The Dispatch is a sister title to Mill Media’s publications Manchester Mill, Liverpool Post and Sheffield Tribune.
The newspaper was named in honor of the defunct newspaper Birmingham Evening Dispatch, which merged with the Mail in 1967, and is known to modern audiences for featuring in the BBC drama Peaky Blinders.
Kate took up the LDR role – her first job at a local news organization – in May last year and left last month.
In an interview with i, she promised to publish content on the online-only Dispatch that is “not a tabloid, but a deeper story that gets to the essence of the city.”
Kate said: We are the birthplace of heavy metal. There is brutalist architecture.
“I don’t think Birmingham’s culture gets the attention it deserves.”
The project is being funded by a £350,000 investment in the Mill Network by a series of benefactors led by Sir Mark Thompson, former BBC director-general and current chief executive of CNN.
“We wanted to show that this kind of journalism is popular and that people will enjoy it, pay for it and engage with it,” said Mill founder Joshi Herman.
The Mill, which started in Manchester during the 2020 coronavirus lockdown, currently has 2,584 members who pay a monthly subscription fee of around £7 via the Substack newsletter platform.
Sister publications Liverpool’s The Post and Sheffield’s Tribune have a further 3,000 paying members.
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