Brown envelopes, a simple idea and a call to action

The Mersey Monitor was founded on a pretty simple belief: that people taking part in local public life is crucial to a thriving democracy, and further, that people are better able to take part in that public life when they understand how the places they live actually function (or don’t).

Too much modern public discussion is driven by spectacle, outrage, certainty and seemingly endless narrative. Complex realities are often flattened into political theatre, while those systems that shape our everyday lives can feel like they receive far less attention than they should. We think journalism should resist that drift.

The Monitor focuses on the civic life of Merseyside, including but not limited to councils, planning, housing, transport, public services, local politics, our NHS - in a nutshell, the decisions that shape our communities and our lives. We are interested not only in conflict, but in consequences; not only in what people say, but in what institutions actually do and how it impacts us, the people who live here.

We do not believe journalism should emotionally herd readers toward predetermined conclusions or reduce every issue down to heroes and villains, and that’s one of the reasons we say we’re not really into collecting scalps here at the Monitor and why it’s possible you might find our stories feel sometimes like they pull their punches compared to other outlets that go for the boldest and most emotional line.

Public life is often complicated, perpetually unresolved and shaped by systems that can be very easy to overlook. The important stuff is often buried in dry documents rather than rhetorical flourishes. To our good fortune we actually enjoy rooting through those kinds of documents here because, to the Monitor, they’re not just artefacts of bureaucratic decision making, they reveal how things actually work, the mechanisms behind that which affects our day to day lives directly.

Here lives accountability, so it’s not something we ever find boring, but we do get these things are dry as dust, and our lives are so busy, so precarious, that the mere act of paying attention can sometimes seem impossible with everything else going on. That’s where we think we can offer something of value, in doing that dirty work of digging through the tomes, doing our best to make sense of it and making sure you know about it too.

We don’t believe journalism should be cold, humourless or detached from human experience, but we do believe we have to be very careful about the narratives we form. We believe storytelling matters, but storytelling should serve reality not the other way around. Mood, atmosphere and urban metropolitan vibes may well have their place, but they are no substitute for actually getting to grips with a subject, and can sometimes lead one down the garden path, giving the appearance of scrutiny without actually delivering it.

The Monitor exists to help people remain connected to the civic life around them, not as passive consumers of media spectacle but as citizens capable of paying attention to the forces shaping our communities and, in doing so, help shape them into something that works for the common good. This feels vital now more than ever. At a time when misinformation, disinformation and endless outrage are feeding division and disconnect, we think paying attention properly is part of the fight back.

The Monitor is free to read because we do not believe access to local civic information should depend entirely on who can afford another monthly subscription.

Local journalism matters because it helps people understand the systems and decisions shaping the places we live. Housing, planning, transport, public services and local democracy affect everyone, not just paying audiences. We want the Monitor to remain accessible to the communities it reports on.

So much of the discussion about reinventing local news and making local news sustainable assumes a need to build or maintain empires, develop ever growing paid subscription bases, or bring in more profit for already wealthy shareholders. But isn’t that part of the problem, what feeds the decline - a view of journalism not as public good but as profit centre. We’re going to do it a bit differently here.

Rather than building the Monitor primarily around aggressive subscription growth and increasingly restrictive access, we are trying to build something sustained by trust, usefulness and voluntary support from readers who value what we do and want it to continue.

We are not interested in turning civic life into premium content or treating readers primarily as conversion targets. We would rather build a publication that people choose to return to because it is grounded, useful and very much connected to here.

If readers choose to support the Monitor financially, they won’t be unlocking hidden truths or joining some exclusive club, or even a ‘movement’ as some others would have it. Supporting the Monitor helps sustain a public-minded local publication that is for and of Merseyside, one that believes civic understanding should remain as open and accessible as possible, and it’s that simple really.

That does not mean our journalism is free to produce, far from it. Reporting absolutely does take time, money, patience and care. Building a publication that lasts does too. We believe it’s important for the Monitor to be not-for-profit so we aim to set up as soon as possible as a CIC. We’d love to hear from people interested in coming on board, who share our vision of a journalism that believes in its own civic duty rather than in making a profit.

If you value that, please consider dropping us a couple of quid every now and again. Formally setting up as a CIC costs money, as do things like getting insurance in place, keeping the site online and signing up to a regulator - because journalism needs checks and balances too. We’re chucking a lot of time, effort and any spare cash we have at this already, because it’s a project we believe in. Sure, we’d like to make some kind of a wage from it at some point, but that’s not what’s driving us, it’s just something that would help keep things sustainable. It would be amazing if we can create jobs too for other civic minded reporters. But we could really do with a bit of help to get things moving a tad more quickly.

We do also have a cunning plan to produce a regular print edition, which will be delivered to you in a brown envelope (we do also think we have a sense of humour here) should you wish to pay for one, which we hope will help keep things sustainable and also make our journalism more accessible for those who aren’t online as much, so watch this space.

If you don’t have the capacity to donate right now, it’s no problem at all. Please just enjoy the stories, have a nose, and consider signing up. It’s free, you’ll get one or two newsletters a week and it means you can then comment, and we’d love to spark discussion here, it’s kind of the point - we want more people engaged in public life, in helping to provide that scrutiny and oversight around decisions made in our name, and sometimes that starts with an articulated thought shared with others who care too, so please don’t be shy - tell us what you think.

We’d also love you to consider getting involved. We talk to lots of people already who we consider part of the Monitor but whose names you may not necessarily see in bylines on our pages. People who also care about what’s happening in our boroughs and our city and are helping to make sense of it too, and we’re very grateful for your involvement.

We’d love more people to write articles at the Monitor. You don’t have to be a seasoned journalist, maybe you’ve never written an article before in your life. The most important thing is a sense of curiosity and care about what’s going on around us, we can help with the rest.

People mystify journalism, or try to make it all about some big literary writing project, and we’re writers and love literature too, we get the desire to be somewhat romantic about it all - but what ends up on paper, or on the pages of a website, is the tiny little end result of journalism. What’s behind it, the really important stuff, is the paying attention, noticing the details, clocking the discrepancies, observing the points of disconnect, finding what’s buried, cross checking, more cross checking (did we mention cross checking?) - and not being afraid to ask the questions. So, please don’t ever let writing experience feel like a barrier, it’s not even half of what journalism is, or in our view, should be.

Do get in touch, we’d love to have a chat with you, let’s see what we can work out - there’s a home for you here at the Mersey Monitor.

But, in the meantime please enjoy our site, and if you like what you see share the love a bit and let others know there’s a new publication in town, one rooted here, for here and with nary a millionaire shareholder or subscription conversion target in sight.

You can donate here: https://www.merseymonitor.com/#/portal/support

You can also set up a regular donation here:

We have set the donation page so that we aren’t notified of who has donated, this is to help safeguard editorial independence, but also means we can’t individually thank you for your contributions to help keep the Monitor sustainable. Please know your support means a lot, we appreciate you helping sustain local public interest journalism and helping to ensure free access to all.

You can drop us an email in confidence at themerseymonitor@outlook.com or feel free to give us a call on 07442 402 023.