Welcome to NewJournal+ and how you can help protect Camden's campaigning voice
Sign up today for our new newsletter with both free and paid options
Thursday, 1st May — By Richard Osley
The New Journal’s modest offices at 40 Camden Road
HI there, we’re off! Now that seems an appropriate way to start, as it was the headline on the very first issue of the Camden New Journal back in 1982.
Here we go again on another adventure with the launch of a new subscription newsletter service.
Many readers will know how our paper was born out of a strike action which had lasted for more than a year – the “old” Camden Journal having been shut down by its private company owners.
People marched through the streets to save the newspaper and the defiant journalists of the day took the plunge and set up their own title. The “New” in our title has stuck for more than 40 years in recognition of their determination that Camden should not lose its community voice.
Over the years, readers have been rewarded with a free, independent newspaper which has campaigned, scrutinised, investigated and entertained.
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The New Journal and later its sister title the Islington Tribune, have won a cabinet full of awards and are known and admired across the readership areas and the north of the city.
We have often been asked to start newspapers in Barnet, Haringey and Hackney and elsewhere but the intention was never to build a media empire akin to the big companies which grip most of this country’s local press.
Some of these firms have more than 150 titles, stretching the definition of local and spread so thinly that many papers now are ghosts of their previous forms. This has followed their willingness to cut editorial staff and short-cut the news-gathering process.
But to really hold our public institutions to account takes time and dedication, long hours, heaps of hard work and reporters on the ground.
The CNJ’s campaigning endeavour has, among many achievements, helped save University College Hospital, the emergency department at the Whittington, the Prince of Wales swimming baths and Kentish Town city farm.
We helped win a living wage for school catering staff, campaigned for better resources for London’s fire brigade when it was faced with station closures and organised conferences for debates on climate change and violence against women and girls. We’ve run food aid vans for those in need during the Covid and cost-of-living crises, and Christmas hamper treats for those facing hardship in December. The list goes on.
Taking supplies to community food banks
But the times are changing for everyone and there is no hiding from the tough economic conditions.
That’s why signing up to NewJournal+ – our new newsletter – and considering becoming a paid subscriber is the single biggest way you can help protect quality journalism in north London. Every penny from paid subscriptions will go directly into covering the costs of what we do. This will never be scraping social media for quick stories or publishing press releases to fill space, nor getting ChatGPT to write soulless, identikit articles or relying on the BBC to supply copy.
We will be at council meetings keeping an eye on your local politicians, the police tape when something has happened in your street and your flat when the pipe is leaking and your landlord is being slow to arrange a fix. You don’t want us to be writing stories about Strictly Come Dancing stars or dubious football transfer gossip.
Readers want to know what’s happening in their patch and why, with the help of experienced reporters who know this borough inside out.
Even if you do not read every word in every issue every week – although, there are many who do and tell us of every typo we commit in their constructive but warm feedback – we will be here when you need us. Rather than owned by a behemoth company, our newspaper is run more in the spirit of a co-op. The directors are stewards of its founding principles, rather than owners who could ever sell the paper.
That means there are no shareholders seeking dividends or executives hoarding big salaries.
So for those considering a paid subscription, rest assured nobody is on thunderous wages and the mission that Camden, Islington and beyond should have its local, campaigning voice has been and remains an incentive in itself.
As we launch NewJournal+ there will be no changes to our print publications, which will still be packed full of news, investigations, arts and sport. But this is the best possible way that those who appreciate the papers in Camden and Islington can support us going forward.
Those who sign up on the free plan will still get an email with our Monday digest of news to help keep you up to date and across everything that is happening in north London.
There will also be some posts shared without a paid subscription.
Paid subscribers, however, will get extra interviews and features which take you behind the headlines. It will be all put together by our award-winning team of writers.
Our former William McLennan chases Boris Johnson on his bike during his time as mayor with questions about fire brigade cuts
They will also have access to our new politics column, in the run-up to next year’s big local elections. So this is how you can help, and this time you don’t have to march through the streets to do it.
There is currently a special launch offer for the first week, with a third off both monthly and annual subscriptions. For those who want to go mad and really give us a boost, there is a “top supporter” option where you can insert your own yearly figure. Thank you to everyone who has helped set the new service up and has already subscribed.
We’re off!
Not another subscription? This one is different
IT seems like everywhere you look, somebody is asking you to take out a subscription for this or for that. In our media world, there are even newspapers who pay their editors salaries of more than £500,000 a year and have large reserves and still ask you to support them in a similar way.
That’s not the case at the New Journal and Islington Tribune, where there are no luxury canalside offices, fantastically paid staff or executives who park up in a sports car asking what their bonus will be. Not a penny is wasted.
One of the key reasons to sign up to New Journal+ for those who can afford to is that they will be ensuring everybody in Camden, regardless of circumstance, still has its campaigning, challenging voice. A subscription means interesting extra articles for those who join, but it also means those who can’t afford to will still always get their New Journal on a Thursday – their printed paper there, free to pick up. In this way it’s a selfless contribution for a greater good.
The battlebus rolls on the march to Save The Whittington
The research is clear that areas without a strong local media suffer.
You don’t have to agree with every word we print to see that, and the paper, in any respect, has always found room for political debate from all sides of the spectrum. It’s why the unique letters pages are so lively.
But beyond the very serious reasons for a paper like ours existing and the role it plays in local democracy, this is also a meeting place to celebrate our borough. Next week, for example you’ll see a photo spread of the stars of the Camden schools music concert at the Royal Albert Hall. Clippings will be kept in family memory boxes forever.
It’s a live record of the people’s history of our borough, whether it’s the picture of your child opening their GCSE results or your Gran diving into the Hampstead Heath ponds for the Christmas Day swim, and everything in between. This isn’t a national newspaper regurgitating news you have already heard on the TV and radio. This paper is about everyone, it’s about you!
The North London Bubble
NEWJOURNAL+ subscribers will be able to read a weekend politics column called the North London Bubble written by Richard Osley, the New Journal’s editor, and Isabel Loubser – who covers politics for the Islington Tribune.
Across the two boroughs, we are living and working in a unique catchment area with perhaps the most high profile set of MPs in the country, including the prime minister, Sir Keir Starmer, and Jeremy Corbyn his predecessor as the leader of the Labour Party.
Add in Tulip Siddiq and Emily Thornberry and there is never a dull moment. And that’s before you get on to the council gossip at two prominent local authorities which will hold boroughwide elections in just over a year. Sometimes it feels like all roads in politics lead back to Camden and Islington.
The column starts this weekend and will be open to all subscribers, free and paid, for its first outing.
