The Mill Media's Simple Bet: Readers Pay for Quality
Trading Traffic for Subscribers: The Mill's Four-Year Experiment
Joshi Herrmann launched The Mill in 2020 with a simple bet: people would pay for proper local journalism if you actually gave them proper local journalism. Four years later, he’s got around 13,000 paying subscribers across six cities and is proving that the UK’s regional newspaper groups have been getting it wrong for two decades.
The Manchester Evening News was publishing stories about Piers Morgan. The Liverpool Echo was chasing whatever TV drama was trending that week. Across Britain’s major cities, regional newspapers that once employed hundreds of journalists and broke real stories had become traffic farms covered in programmatic ads, churning out whatever might get clicks.
“The executives in charge of these amazing media companies were trashing these brands so comprehensively and letting down local readers in the process,” Herrmann says. “That annoyed me, but it also felt like an opportunity to prove that they were doing it wrong.”
Trading Ads for Readers
Herrmann spent years at The Evening Standard, as well as writing for The Times, The Guardian, and The Telegraph. He watched regional media make what he sees as the critical mistake: when print advertising revenue collapsed, they tried to replace it with digital advertising rather than reader subscriptions.
“In local news in the UK, there had been a focus on advertising revenue rather than subscription revenue for a long time.” “The switch to digital had fundamentally been a switch from making most of your money in print from advertising to making most of your money from advertising in a digital setting. And I was aware that wasn’t working as a model.”
Joshi Herrmann, Founder of The Mill Media
Go to any regional newspaper website, and you’d see the result. Dozens of stories that had nothing to do with the city. Websites plastered with terrible ads. Content designed purely to drive traffic volume rather than serve readers.
“If I thought that was an insane situation for a high-quality local newspaper,” Herrmann says, “then I knew that lots of other people would agree with me.”
Lockdown Launch
The timing was accidental. Herrmann had been in the Czech Republic, planning to write a book about his family and the Holocaust. The pandemic killed that plan and he ended up back in the UK helping his sister and spending time in the garden and wondering what to do next.
By 2020, the infrastructure was in place to try something different. Substack had shown individual creators could build businesses charging for content. Tony Mecia was running a successful local business newsletter on the platform in Charlotte, North Carolina called The Charlotte Ledger.
“I thought, well, it is a different market, he’s operating in a much more affluent area than Manchester—but this might be worth a go.”
Herrmann had no money for a big team. That constraint became an advantage. He’d launch a newsletter, keep costs low, and focus on quality over volume. He set the price at roughly double what most Substack newsletters charged, betting readers would value proper local journalism enough to pay for it.
They did.
The Numbers
Mill Media now operates in Manchester, Sheffield, Liverpool, Birmingham, London, and Glasgow. About 175,000 people are on free email lists. 13,000 paying subscribers.
The original Mill in Manchester has 4,000 paying subscribers. The Sheffield Tribune has 3,000. Liverpool Post has 2,000. Newer titles are growing.
Revenue is overwhelmingly reader-driven. Advertising accounts for about 5% - high-quality sponsorships with the FT, Royal Horticultural Society, and Manchester Museum. Herrmann wants to grow that to maybe 20% for diversification, but the core model stays reader-funded.
“If you’re reader-funded, your incentive is to give quality to those readers,” he says. “We’ve got to maintain that.”
The company moved from Substack to Ghost, cutting platform costs to less than a fifth of what they had been paying while gaining greater control over design. “It’s a lot cheaper… it allows us to experiment.”
How to Pick a City
There’s no spreadsheet. Herrmann doesn’t analyse demographics or run market sizing models. He looks for someone who loves their city and believes in narrative journalism.
“The most important determinant is the person in the city who wants to do it.”
The Bell in Glasgow happened because Robbie Armstrong got in touch, they met for a drink, and Herrmann recognised someone with encyclopaedic knowledge of the city and genuine passion for quality work. “At the beginning, when it’s difficult, and it’s a real battle, and you have almost no money, and it’s a real risk, you need that first person who is a pioneering person.”
Cities with universities help. Strong local identity distinct from London helps. But the human element matters most. “If someone came along in a city that I really loved, and I had the right person, I’d probably go for that over not the right person in a very large city.”
Individual Backers, Not VCs
Herrmann raised funding from people, not funds. Mark Thompson, former CEO of the New York Times and current CEO of CNN, Nick Johnston from Axios and Investor Turi Munthe.
They’re individuals who care about journalism, not firms with processes and exit timelines.
“The conversations I had with those people were no different from the conversation I’ve had with other journalists”, Herrmann says. “Someone who cares about journalism asks a bunch of questions for 45 minutes, and then I say at the end, would you throw in a bit of cash?”
They provide advice when Herrmann asks for it. They don’t interfere with editorial. “Fundamentally, you can take all the advice you want, but you have to go with your gut. The mistakes are mine, and the decisions are mine.” The investors share Herrmann’s view that journalism must be commercially sustainable.
“The only genuine solution to the journalism problems that we have is via commercial sustainability.”
City by City Profitability
Each city aims to break even within two to three years. Manchester and Sheffield are already profitable. Liverpool and Birmingham should hit profitability this year. London by year’s end. Glasgow early next year.
“I don’t expect us to be the most profitable company in the UK, but I expect us to cover our costs in our cities after a couple of years,” Herrmann says. “Otherwise, you’re creating some sort of vanity project. I’m not interested in that.”
When The Bell launched in Glasgow, journalists at traditional Scottish newspapers weren’t thrilled. They felt they were doing quality work but were stuck writing 14 stories a day to feed the traffic machine. Herrmann’s not criticising the journalists.
“It’s not the quality of the journalists. It’s not about their effort. It’s about the fact that the people who make decisions in these newsrooms have made bad strategic business decisions that have led them to a model that means these young journalists have to write 14 stories in a day.”
What Works
Mill Media now employs 22 people and is growing. The company has a model that prioritises readers over traffic and quality over volume.
“We’re trying to introduce a way of people valuing high-quality local journalism in a way that hasn’t been there in the culture before,” Herrmann says. It’s not easy. It requires exceptional journalism every day, smart promotion, and relentless focus on basics. But the growth is real. From one person during lockdown to a multi-city operation, backed by media veterans and sustainable economics in each market.
Regional journalism’s problems were never about reader appetite. They focused on business models chasing the wrong revenue. Herrmann’s success is the proof. The question for Britain’s struggling regional newspaper groups isn’t whether this model works. It’s whether they have the appetite to execute it.