About

Mill Media is leading a renaissance in high-quality journalism across the UK. We believe in great writing, deep reporting and giving readers a sense of insight and connection that has been lost in the era of clickbait and mass-produced online media. 

Founded in Manchester in 2020, we now have journalists operating in seven cities, producing long reads and investigations that set the agenda. Our publications have built loyal and passionate communities of readers and subscribers in Manchester, Birmingham, London, Sheffield, Liverpool, Leeds and Glasgow.

Our financial backers include Sir Mark Thompson, the chief executive of CNN and former boss of the New York Times and BBC, who invested because of the “exceptional quality” of our work. In the past year, our stories have led to political resignations, questions in parliament, and have prompted a police investigation into fraud at a university. We were a finalist for Private Eye’s Paul Foot Award in 2025 and 2026, and won the local journalism award at the British Journalism Awards last year. The Observer wrote that we are “shaking up local news.”

The Mill’s team in our Manchester newsroom: Staff writers Jack Dulhanty (left) and Mollie Simpson (centre), and founder and editor Joshi Herrmann (right). Photo: Dani Cole.

The journey started when Joshi founded The Mill as a one-man-band in June 2020, a few months into the pandemic. The idea was very simple: would people start valuing and paying for local news again if it was done in a completely different way? More in-depth; more nuanced; with stories that were more enjoyable to read and weren’t covered in horrible advertising.

Very quickly, we realised that they would. People deeply value local information and great writing about the places they live, but they have been alienated by the way in which local newspapers have been depleted by their corporate owners. Within three months of starting out, with only one fulltime staff member and a brand that no one had heard of, more than 500 readers were funding the Mill as paying members, and more than 5,000 were on our email list.

Staff writer Jack Dulhanty and senior editor Sophie Atkinson, who was one of the first writers to contribute to The Mill in the early days. Photo by Dani Cole.

From there, we have grown into a fully-fledged media company. We now have have publications in seven cities – including The Tribune in Sheffield, The Post in Liverpool, The Dispatch in Birmingham, The Bell in Glasgow, The Londoner in the capital and The Exchange in Leeds – and more than 200,000 people have joined our mailing lists. Crucially, more than 15,000 paying members pay for and support our journalism, come to our events and shape what we cover.

We have won industry awards, been cited in major newspapers from The Guardian to The Times, and been mentioned as a promising example of the future of local journalism in recent reports from leading MPs and the research firm Enders Analysis.

To join the team, please take a look at the roles we are currently hiring for. To advertise with us, please visit our sponsorships page. To pitch us, click here. Our editorial guidelines are here.

“I love the ambition of bringing deeply-reported narrative journalism to local news and I’m so impressed with how it’s going. That’s the kind of journalism Britain needs more of. If I was a young writer right now, I would want to work for Mill Media.”

Tina Brown, former editor of Vanity Fair and the New Yorker.

Mill Media is registered in England as The Millers Publishing Company Limited (company no. 13761876). Registered office: 520, Manchester Royal Exchange Offices, Old Bank Street, Manchester, England, M2 7PE.