And the winner is...

Dear readers — on Thursday evening, our editor Abi took a trip down to London for the British Journalism Awards. She was shortlisted for her exposé about historian Laurence Westgaph; an investigation that uncovered shocking allegations of sexual, physical and emotional abuse towards women he dated over the past two decades.

She attended the awards with two wonderful colleagues from our sister titles in the north. Daniel Timms from The Tribune was nominated for revealing that the University of Sheffield is heavily involved in developing nuclear warheads, while Mollie Simpson from The Mill was shortlisted for her explosive stories about the University of Greater Manchester.

Jeremy Vine was hosting and after a slew of terrible jokes, the judges decided that Mollie's work was the best piece of local journalism written over the last year! Mollie spent months tirelessly poring over financial documents, conducting interviews and searching for sources to pull off the Manchester investigation – and as a result of her reporting the university's vice chancellor has been suspended pending a fraud inquiry.

It's nice to bask in the glow of a victory. But it's also a moment to reflect. The fact that so many of our titles were nominated, and the fact that Mollie won, says something really important about the future of local journalism.

It's been our view for some time that if you want better, deeper journalism it just can't be mainly funded by ads. That approach leads to clickbait and incendiary headlines with very little underneath them. The kind of drudgery that's needed to do a proper investigation will never be repaid in clicks to a website, which is why it just doesn't happen on ad-led titles.

The only way these stories can happen is because local readers pay to support us. We know our members want us to do proper, old-school investigations, so that's what we give them. As the comments under our recent stories about Peter Mitchell and Colette Goulding show, readers value it. And as the recent suspension of Goulding from the Labour party shows, this journalism doesn't just observe the world: it changes it.

So, do you want to join the revolution, and get behind local journalism so good it wins awards? There are lots of rich and powerful people with things to hide who would love you not to. They only need your apathy or for you to tell yourself you'll get round to it another day.

Now would be a great time to get on board if you're not already a paying member. We're so close to hitting 2,000 subscribers and we're determined to get there before the end of the year. Why? Because it would send a really powerful message about the kind of journalism Merseyside supports, and put the wind in our sails as we head into 2026, more determined than ever to keep probing what's going on behind the scenes.

To give us that bit of extra motivation we've set up a little tracker on our website to show how we're doing. We just need 60 more paying members. Could you be one of the heroes who sees proper local journalism and thinks: that's something I want to support?

Thanks,

The Post