Welcome to The Northern Eco
Join the hundreds of people who receive a weekly round up of news seen through a green lens each Tuesday morning. Enjoy a mix of original content written by me plus a curation of the best from others.
What’s this all about?
As a journalist who has been involved in the news media for the last 30 years, I know how important local news is but also how difficult it can be to find the topics that really interest you.
I passionately believe in the power of local news and also hear people saying that they want to protect their local environment. Can The Northern Eco bring both these things together? That’s the dream.
After all, without news, how would you know about the issues affecting your community? How would you know what your local authorities were planning or whether they were acting legally? How would you know if your local environment was being impacted and by whom? And how would you know about the positive changes in your area, the success stories?
With the big news organisations having to rely on advertising to keep going, the experience for readers can suffer with pop-up ads or misleading “clickbait” headlines. This is why we’re trying to do things differently by not taking advertising but instead being reader supported with paying subscribers. Our newsletters recommend local events and will keep you up to date on what’s happening in respect of environmental issues locally.
Why is it called The Northern Eco?
Yes, it’s a play on The Northern Echo (NE). If you understand the geographical patch the NE covers, then you’ll immediately understand where we’re coming from. If that’s a new title for you, the NE is a daily newspaper which covers North Yorkshire, County Durham, Teesside and other parts of North East England. It has a proud history being previously referred to as the Miners’ Bible and I’m always proud to say I was once news editor there for a period in the 1990s before I moved onto Guardian Media Group.
Why Substack?
We’re not alone in using this platform and it’s growing fast for local and hyperlocal news. I’ve been trying to map some of them here. There’s a podcast on this topic here which might interest you too. Substack has all the technology that is needed to run an independent news business with a website, newsletter management tool and app for readers to engage with in a way that means we can grow.
On that topic, I would like to invite anyone who has something to share to help build this up - I’d love us to become a network of curators and contributors who can share their passion for the environment.
How it works
Some of our journalism is free. Just sign up to our mailing list below and you will get one newsletter every Tuesday, plus our Friday what’s on with eco events each week.
Members get everything we publish. They pay £4.99-a-month (or just 14p a day if they subscribe for a year) and will receive extra information as well as being able to join our discussion threads, contribute to our reporting and support our growth.