Your last chance

Londoners love a good story: the banter at the barber shop on Green Lanes and the whispered gossip at the members’ club in St James’,  the breathless haven’t-you-heard? chatter at the Hackney natural wine bar and the long-running lore of the old-timers in the pub in Acton. Some of these tales are juicy and glamorous; others, urgent and vital — but what unites them, always, is a sense of propulsion and fascination. Taken together, they become the story of the city itself: its triumphs and its failures, its wannabes and its has-beens, its glitz and its grit. 

The Londoner’s job, as we see it, is to tell this story. We always do a rigorous fact-check before our dispatches get to your inbox, of course, but we never let the fun and drama get lost in the process. Because we’re not aiming to just give you information about London. We want to entertain, to illuminate, to make you feel something. Put simply, we want you to know and love the city we live in better through the stories we tell. And we’re really, really excited about it.

Since launching The Londoner five months ago, we’ve made a pretty strong start, particularly for a team with just three members and a tiny office in a Pimlico attic. There’s been our investigation into Jas Athwal’s failing children’s homes (which the prime minister was questioned about — not bad for our first week), as well as lyrical long-reads on the city’s last greyhound track and buzzy dispatches from its hottest literary parties. 

We’ve already racked up nearly 450 paying members as a result of these efforts. These are our early backers — the people who understand what we’re trying to do, and who’ve got behind us. To thank them, we’ve been running a forever 20% discount on our memberships, meaning that these early backers will permanently receive The Londoner at this extra-special reduced price.

But we’ll be blunt: we’re a long way from having the support we need to make this thing sustainable. The Londoner is a gambit, a leap in the dark. We believe that the way we do journalism is something the capital wants and needs. But to prove that — and to get us breaking even — we need more paying subscribers. The next big milestone is 500, almost within touching distance. Reaching it would make us extremely happy — and give us confidence that there’s a demand for the type of thrilling, immersive, evocative coverage we think best reflects this city.

But as much as we’d love to, we can’t run our discounts forever. So we wanted to give you one final chance to join our exclusive club of early supporters, to be part of those intrepid few who believed that London deserved better local journalism — and did something about it. This is your final call: tomorrow, our forever 20% membership ends. 

This means that, if you don’t sign up by 11.59pm on 30 April, you’re missing out on getting all our reporting, essays and analysis for an extraordinary £1.37 a week (if you grab a yearly membership). That’s less than a Netflix subscription, less than a Pret sandwich — and certainly less than a London pint. 

If you’ve been debating whether to take the plunge, consider this your sign. We’re only answerable to one group: our readers. We want to create media that represents your interests about the city you live in, not those of billionaire despots or their sycophants. To do this requires just one, all-important thing: your support.