“People do want good journalism”: one woman’s mission to revive Birmingham’s local media

Few can claim to have helped launch a newspaper. But for Birmingham-based journalist, Kate Knowles, and co-founder of new online outlet The Dispatch, it is an honour she carries with pride.

The Birmingham Dispatch burst onto web browsers and into inboxes back in October, joining Mill Media stablemates The Liverpool Post, Sheffield Tribune, and Manchester Mill. It is part of a mission to help restore high-quality, local journalism, during an internet age that has seen the once dominant regional agenda-setters collapse like dominoes. The Dispatch is trying to arrest this decline by doing something different. Running from the online subscription site Substack, it allows readers to access a daily newsletter filled with all the paper’s latest reporting and updates. Rather than having to wade through ads or generalised national content, they can cut straight to the news affecting them and their areas.

But how did Kate, a former Birmingham Live reporter, who only came to journalism two years ago, take the plunge into steering a new media outlet?

“I actually approached my boss [Joshi Herrmann, Mill Media founder] first,” she told me. “I was aware of the other Mill outlets and it was exactly the kind of writing I had always wanted to do – more feature-led and in-depth. I got in touch with a friend, who is a freelance journalist and developed quite a detailed plan for what it might look like. Joshi was really keen on the idea but it took a bit of time and a few stages to finally get approved.”

We looked partly at demographics, because Birmingham is quite a young city, which lends itself well to a more digitally native and media literate population

The detailed plan Kate cites was about working out what The Dispatch’s exact function would be, beyond merely offering an alternative to existing mainstream media outlets. “We looked partly at demographics because Birmingham is quite a young city, which lends itself well to a more digitally native and media literate population,” Knowles explained. “We also thought the success in Manchester was a good indicator given the two cities’s similarities. But more than anything, we just felt the city was a bit underserved by its current media offering.”

Understanding why an outlet like The Dispatch has come to be is a slightly complicated task. On one level, the last decade has been disastrous for local journalism. The regional news media sector is now around seven times smaller than it was back in 2008, whilst local print circulation figures have fallen by almost a fifth in the last year alone. But by some metrics, exposure has never been greater. Birmingham Live came top of the tree among non-national titles between March 2023 and March 2024 for the overall number of users, beating both the Evening Standard and Manchester Evening News by nearly a million each. The newspaper’s editor, Graeme Brown, has highlighted not just the high levels of overall traffic but the consistent engagement of readers, claiming in an interview with the Press Gazette that there are up to 200,000 who make 16 visits to their page a month. There are positive signs that regional titles may be able to weather the storm and hold on to readers in a more challenging climate.

I hope that the bold ambition of The Dispatch and its sister titles will be an inspiration as well as a threat to big regional news publishers

But it is less the reach of the paper than its output that concerns Kate. “There are some great journalists and journalism,” she countered. “But I don’t think that the focus at the top is really on that. The whole model is geared towards making money any way they can.”

After receiving the backing of Mill Media (which included capital investment of around £350,000 from a group including CNN Chief Executive, Sir Mark Thompson), and indeed the unqualified support of family and friends, the time came late last year to unveil the new operation to the world. But not everyone was pleased, particularly those at her former employers of Reach plc. “There were definitely some people who weren’t happy. But it was more from what I heard through the grapevine. The colleagues I worked most closely with were all very understanding and there wasn’t any animosity there.” (Kate adds that in her year-plus stint at the organisation, she met very few of her colleagues in person, due to the closure of the Mail/Birmingham Live’s old headquarters and relocation to Brindleyplace.)

The Dispatch may have only been operating for just over six months, but it has already received good feedback. Writing in The i, columnist Ian Burrell said: “I hope that the bold ambition of The Dispatch and its sister titles will be an inspiration as well as a threat to big regional news publishers. They should take note of the early success of this model and recognise that readers are tired of shallow distraction. Our local news outlets should be a source of enrichment, and of pride in where we live.” Readers have also responded well to the paper’s broad range of stories, from regeneration in Ladywood to planning proposals on Birmingham’s famed Station Street. But there is one thing above all that has been clear to Knowles in her time at the helm of The Dispatch: “People do want good journalism.”

“A lot of legacy companies are convinced that tastes have changed and people don’t want the longer-form stuff, but as long as it is high quality and engaging, people will read it.”

She plans to focus more on some of the paper’s investigative work, citing the impact of a series of exclusive pieces on property entrepreneur Gurpaal Judge. And Kate is not overly concerned about The Dispatch finding its feet amongst fellow local media organisations, who might be perhaps wary of a fledgling company wading in on their patch. “On the whole, people have been really encouraging,” she reassures me. “As much as I have criticised Birmingham Live, we are doing quite different things. We are not really a threat to these organisations. But even then, I am not really bothered about being a part of some swish media ecosystem. I just want to find interesting stories and tell them.”

It’s not like we have had a golden decade. But we have done our best to shine a light.

The Dispatch’s success is a fear-dispelling bolt for those who have already rung the death knell for local media. But can it be replicated everywhere, and are we likely to see it spread out of Britain’s big cities? “You can see it happening in lots of places and I would certainly welcome it,” Knowles stated. “There have already been some beyond Mill Media, for example the Edinburgh Minute. It is just a case of how each newspaper works, because it is not going to be as easy in smaller places.”

Moving back to the West Midlands, the Birmingham Dispatch’s arrival could not have been more timely. The nation’s second city has been in the news for all the wrong reasons lately, with the bankruptcy of the City Council capturing headlines and leading to swingeing cuts to local services. Writing back in March, former Conservative leader William Hague drew parallels between the lack of effective local media and poor scrutiny on the council’s affairs. An opportunity, it would seem, for The Dispatch to relish.

“People are just quite exhausted,” Knowles reflected. “It’s not like we have had a golden decade. But we have done our best to shine a light. We have been writing a series unpicking what has happened at the Council and people have liked our approach to trying to tell it like a story, not just as short and snappy news articles. People have liked the ‘connecting the dots’ approach to working out what exactly has gone wrong.”

In the view of Knowles, things aren’t all bad. She described the West Midlands mayoral race, still ongoing at the time we spoke, as “quite exciting” (little was she to know the extremely close outcome.) And The Dispatch’s coverage is not just about exposing scandal and uncovering controversy. There’s culture, high and low, as well as more historical reflections on everything from music to the automotive industry. In doing so, it hopes to represent the city and wider region in all its glory, not just the stories which will generate the most clicks. The next decade will likely be crucial for regional media, as pressures on advertising push more titles towards cuts and streamlining. But in attempting to forge a different path, Kate’s newspaper hopes to stem the tide. How it fares may well say as much about the future of local journalism as the fate of The Dispatch.