A love story and a revolution

Dear Londoners, a premature happy new year to all of you.

I’m writing my end-of-year editor’s note, rather unglamourously, on a packed train from Sheffield to St Pancras (though at least I have a seat; unlucky others are sitting in doorways, aisles and in the luggage rack). It’s the final leg of my journey from Lancashire, where I’m from, a trip that should take around two-and-a-half hours but which, due to the closure of the west coast mainline, has taken five. Fun! Perhaps the only upside to this palaver is that it’s given me ample opportunity to think about The Londoner and, more precisely, why I joined it, why I believe we need it, what I want to happen next, and why you’re as essential to its continued existence as me or Andrew.

To explain this, I have to cast my mind back to the end of 2024. Embarrassingly, when I try to recall what people were discussing back then, I find that I cannot, in any way, remember. The US election, I guess? Other than that, zilch. We live in the age of the flood: constant news notifications, fleeting trends and algorithms saturated with stuff (“slop”, as you may have heard, is one of Merriam Webster’s words of the year). It can be difficult to remember what happened last month, let alone last year.

I can remember, though, exactly what we published at The Londoner last December. If there’s an antonym for slop, then I think that would describe us pretty well — thoughtful, considered, high-quality — and the upside is that our stories stick in the mind, rather than disappearing into the digital wastebin, already full of the kind of clickbait that many of our competitors still put stock in. I wrote two articles that month, one on the search for the apocryphal “oldest pub in London” (spoiler: it doesn’t exist), and one on the changing quality of light in the capital (which doubled as a profile of one of the city’s last gas lamplighters, Aran). 

The latter story in particular was one I’d wanted to do for a while. Prior to coming onboard to helm The Londoner, I was an editor on the Financial Times’ Weekend supplement, as well as a freelance writer. But I just couldn’t work out the right place for it. As a writer, there are often stories like this; wisps of ideas that whirl about your head for weeks, months, years, until they eventually coalesce at the perfect moment. For me, that moment was just after I’d joined in November 2024, when it finally sunk in for me that the kind of long-form, in-depth writing I wanted to do about this city — the place that, since my first visit as a child, has charmed and infuriated and fascinated me more than anywhere else on Earth — had finally found a home. 

We began The Londoner shortly after the owner of the Evening Standard, billionaire Evgeny Lebedev (a man who, in a great pub quiz fact, once owned his own wolf), announced that it was firing over half of its editorial staff and moving to a weekly edition model. The rational arguments for starting The Londoner, already obvious, became even more stark: local journalism is a crucial facet of society that connects us to the places we live and the people around us, especially in an age of disinformation and societal siloing; that this kind of journalism has been decimated in London and pretty much everywhere else in the country; that people will be willing to pay for great local journalism again if it's inspiring, engaging and thought-provoking, as well as imparting useful information.

But of course, the rational side is only one part of the argument. My passion for the city, my genuine, sometimes obsessive excitement about it, my conviction that it’s the greatest, most interesting place in the world: these aren’t particularly rational beliefs, as such. But why else would I leave a job at a legacy publication to join a scrappy start-up? After all, the reasons why I moved to London, almost a decade ago now, were similar: it was in part a practical move for career reasons, yes; but primarily it was one of the heart, a yearning to throw myself in the midst of place that had always invigorated and enthralled me.

I am, by nature, a romantic (sue me!). But in just over a year, I’ve seen that the stories we  tell matter — and that we’re giving a voice that wouldn’t otherwise exist. I loved a comment left on Andrew’s piece from late October — about the absurd goings-on at the Loughborough Estate in south east London — by “Oliver”, who’d originally emailed us with the tip. “As the author of the email quoted at the top of the article,” he wrote, “I have to thank Andrew and The Londoner on such a detailed and well rounded piece — it really tells the story of so many residents... I'm grateful to Andrew for following up with so much attention and care, it really mattered a lot to us.” 

A through line in my favourite stories of the year is that they feel undefinably, unmistakably us. You see this in Jack Walton and Andrew’s piece on the saga of the most radical bookshop in east London, or Andrew’s deep-dive on billionaire landlord Asif Aziz’s bid to shut down some of the capital’s most beloved pubs. There’s also Katharine Swindells’ moving portrait of the city’s early morning workers, which went viral on Instagram; Peter Carlyon’s report from the Unite the Kingdom rally; James Greig’s gossipy dispatch from a self-proclaimed sexy reading series and India Birgitta Jarvis’ exploration of the Labubus left on Karl Marx’s grave in Highgate. All of these pieces are vastly different in their subject matter, but I couldn’t really imagine being published anywhere but The Londoner.

Happy birthday to us

The Londoner turns one

The LondonerHannah Williams

Two final points, before I wrap this up and let you grab an early glass of Champagne. The first is a note of thanks. Thousands of you have backed us this year with your hard-earned money, and I deeply appreciate that. In this city, more than perhaps any other, there are lots of things you can spend your cash on (and lots of things you have to spend it on). It therefore means a lot that you choose to support us. Not only that, but many of you have sent us story tips and given us incredible encouragement via kind emails, comments and Tweets. These really are vital, and we love receiving them.

The final point is about 2026 and onwards. I think there’s an opportunity to create something revolutionary in London, a way of connecting people via storytelling, no matter how vast the Big Smoke might seem. Through local journalism, we’re bringing readers together, both online and in real life, at a time when people have never felt so atomised. In time, we want to do this at scale: our office shouldn’t be an attic room of three people, as it is now; it should be a whole floor (I’ve long campaigned for a Fleet Street office, but that might be a little way off…) full of people who are committed to exploring the city and investigating its institutions. We want to turn our stories into podcasts, or documentaries, or print magazines, so they reach whole new audiences.

It’s incredible that we already have 1,139 people paying to fund and be part of The Londoner. In time, I hope — I believe — that that number will be more than 10,000. If you’re already onboard, many thanks. If you’re not, why not tick off a great New Year’s resolution right now and join the club? We need 61 subs to reach our target of 1,200 newbies for the year. I think we can do it. After all, I am a romantic...

So, a heartfelt thanks for your help this year, and see you in 2026.