We want to send you a Brown Envelope

Greetings Mersey Moniteroos,

We hope you’re all having a lovely day, and sorry to interrupt it if so, but we’ve been having a good old think about the future of the Monitor, our free independent public interest news site for Merseyside, and couldn’t wait to tell you about our big plan.

It’s all a bit convoluted, we confess, and involves brown envelopes and a scrutiny committee, so naturally we thought of you.

After an extensive period of consultation involving a small group of interested parties, the Mersey Monitor is delighted to announce the establishment of the Brown Envelope Scrutiny Committee.

Applications are now open, and we’re pleased to confirm that everyone is eligible. All you have to do to be accepted onto the committee is give us a fiver.

(*In the spirit of transparency, we should disclose that the ‘interested parties’ involved in the consultation were, in fact, the cats. I know, we shouldn’t have taken the bait, but they did appear very keen initially. We aren’t quite ready to talk about what happened next and would appreciate it if you didn’t press us. We can, however, confirm they won’t be invited to apply for membership any time soon.)

Anyway, apart from trying in vain to give the cats something useful to do, there is actually a reason we’ve decided to set up an imaginary scrutiny committee, and it has to do with keeping the Monitor going.

What are we going on about?

Well, when we started seriously planning the Mersey Monitor back in April, we wanted to create an independent public interest news site operating on a not-for-profit basis that made information about local democracy on Merseyside freely available to everyone. No paywalls, no advertising, just reporting that helps people understand what’s happening in our communities, where public money is going and what decisions are being made on our behalf.

We‘ve always intended to rely on donations, believing that if we could show people the value of our journalism, enough of you would think it’s worth supporting to keep the whole thing sustainable, and we’ve had a very encouraging response so far. We still believe that’s the way to go, and we’d like to give it all a proper chance.

We’re also planning to register the Monitor as a community interest company (CIC), putting our commitment to operating for public benefit on a more formal footing, and we hope to have all that in the bag by year‘s end.

Since our first published story in May, our reporting has delivered more than a stream of council stories. We’ve helped readers understand how decisions affect their streets, homes and public services, from taking a look at the unfinished spine road in Maghull to questioning why £130k was spent on car park equipment in Wirral, and bringing into public view the warnings about financial losses and ‘catastrophic’ risks sounded at Sefton Arc that led to big changes in the way the service operates - and much more besides.

We’ve followed arguments over HMOs and housing developments across Merseyside, reported live from council meetings as decisions were made, compared metro mayor Steve Rotheram to He-Man, spotted errors in cabinet member updates, and turned complex reports, planning documents and public spending records into clear, practical information for your leisurely perusal.

We’ve also got a hefty pile of investigations sitting in our in-tray, and we’re steadily working our way through them.

These investigations take time and often involve reviewing frankly ridiculous amounts of documentation, contacting multiple sources (sometimes at non-descript coffee shops or out-of-the-way park benches), triangulating information, sifting through data, waiting for responses to Freedom of Information requests and the like, and of course giving public bodies a fair opportunity to respond.

These are the kinds of stories we want to keep producing, reporting that helps us understand what is happening, what it could mean for you and what any of us can do about any of it, while asking difficult questions and holding councils and public bodies to account.

We’ve also assembled a small team of public-spirited journalists, received some lovely feedback and been very grateful for all your generous donations so far. But, everyone involved is still volunteering and dipping into their own pockets for travel, expenses and so on.

We’d like to change that, and eventually pay contributors for their journalism too. We think we’re worth a bit of support, but instead of putting articles behind a paywall like every newshound and his uncle seems to be doing these days, we‘ve decided we’re going to be a bit contrary at the Monitor and offer something a little different - and admittedly quite absurd - in return for your support.

Your official appointment

In a nutshell, we’re introducing a paid membership structure for our newly-formed committee - although all of our stories will still remain completely free to read on our site for anyone who happens upon us.

For just £5 a month, fully paid-up members of the hopefully soon-to-be burgeoning Brown Envelope Scrutiny Committee will receive a personalised Certificate of Endurance, an official membership number and a monthly electronic Brown Envelope Edition.

Now, we should probably manage expectations here, if you had any to begin with. The Brown Envelope Edition isn’t going to be another Monitor newsletter packed with investigations and serious reporting. At least initially, it’ll mostly be small bits of daft stuff inspired by whatever we’ve been reporting on or getting up to that month, presented in the form of imaginary committee correspondence.

There might be agendas, minutes, reports, notices, photographs, risk assessments or the occasional warning, we haven’t entirely decided yet, but each edition will add new documents to your growing collection of utterly unnecessary unofficial committee paperwork. It’s our way of giving supporters something a bit personal, admittedly tokenistic, and hopefully slightly amusing, in return for your support.

We did originally plan to send actual brown envelopes in the post, but after carefully considering the cost, environmental implications and sheer administrative effort involved in producing such blatantly superfluous documents and posting them all out, we decided it would be much easier to just make the whole thing electronic. We’re keeping the name, obviously.

The committee structure

Following careful consideration, we’ve officially approved the following membership arrangements for the Mersey Monitor Brown Envelope Scrutiny Committee:

Committee Member — £5 a month

Your certificate, membership number and monthly Brown Envelope Edition.

Committee Officer — £5 a month

Exactly the same, although with a slightly more impressive title, and occasional requests to hurry up writing the agenda.

Cabinet Member — £60 a year

The same monthly correspondence, a year-long position on the committee should you choose to accept it, plus occasional matters referred to you for a decision. If you do manage to reach a decision, please do let us know and we’ll promptly ignore it. There will be no official car, expenses allowance and certainly no additional biscuits.

All three appointments cost the equivalent of £5 a month because we couldn’t think of a good enough reason to charge different amounts for essentially the same thing.

Also, because of the way Stripe (the payment platform) operates, all membership options actually offer either monthly or annual payments, whether we want them to or not, which does sort of defeat the purpose of having different tiers. But none of this is particularly sensible, so we’ve decided we might as well keep the separate options anyway. You can simply choose whether you’d prefer to pay monthly or annually at the checkout.

None of the membership options gives you any influence whatsoever over what the Monitor investigates or publishes, nor any power to get your bins emptied more often. The committee is in no way real, doesn’t actually meet, and is just a bit of silly fun.

We will start sending certificates out in the first week of November and you can expect to receive your first Brown Envelope Edition in the middle of the month.

Public Gallery — £3 a month

For anyone who’d prefer to avoid all this nonsense but still wants to support us, you can reserve a virtual seat in the public gallery for our non-existent meetings. No extra emails, just £3 a month, and attendance is both entirely optional and ultimately futile.

You can, of course, always give us a one-off donation instead, also officially known as a ‘backhander’, whenever you’ve got the capacity, for as much or as little as you like. We must point out, this confers on you no advantage whatsoever, apart from the satisfaction of knowing you’re doing your bit to support our persistent, incisive and occasionally cheesy public interest journalism for Merseyside.

If you’ve already donated and fear you’re being left out the loop on this unprecedented opportunity, please do get in touch and we’ll give you an ‘honorary committee appointment’ as well as furnishing you with a retrospective membership number and certificate of your own. Contact details in the link.

(*Fear of missing out to us millennials and beyond, I’m reliably informed)

But what about the actual brown envelopes?

Having formally abolished the physical Brown Envelope from the scheme, we’ve had another think and decided that actually we’re going to bring it back for people who might genuinely benefit from receiving one.

Not everyone is online, and we want our journalism to also reach people who can’t easily access it digitally. We’ll therefore offer printed correspondence and selections of our reporting by individual arrangement for a small fee, using responsibly sourced paper and sent out, yes you’ve guessed it, in an actual, real, brown envelope.

We’ve only got very limited capacity for this one and have formally decided to call the arrangement ‘consultancy services’. We’ve also decided to exempt it from our usual procurement rules. Just get in touch with us directly, mention the brown envelope, and I’m sure we can figure something out. Contact details in the link.

The serious bit

Regular contributions will help us cover the costs of keeping the Monitor running, investigate more stories and eventually pay the people producing them. We’d also like to broaden our coverage, give other public bodies the attention they deserve and stop studiously ignoring Halton eventually, which is, after all, part of the city region too.

We’re also planning to apply to join IMPRESS, the independent press regulator, as part of our commitment to responsible, accountable journalism.

Everything we publish will remain free to read, whether you join our imaginary committee or not. We know there are plenty of demands on people’s finances and don’t want anyone to feel obliged to contribute, but if you think what we’re doing is worthwhile and can support us, we’d be delighted to have you on board.

And if you’d prefer to carry on just reading, sharing our stories and sending us tips instead, please do. We want the Monitor to remain an open-access local public interest news site for everyone. If you’re not already signed up for free, why not consider it - you’ll receive our weekly newsletter, usually sent out on a Sunday, as well as be able comment on our articles. You can do that below.

We can’t promise that any of these membership options will improve your life in any measurable way, but if you join as a paying member, you will be helping to build an independent local newspaper while becoming a certified participant in a completely fictional scrutiny committee. Seems a perfectly reasonable enough outcome for a scheme established following a sham consultation with a gang of treacherous cats, doesn’t it?

*Membership of the Brown Envelope Scrutiny Committee does not constitute appointment to any actual public body. No decisions of any consequence will be delegated to the Cabinet, or anyone else for that matter. Thank you for supporting free independent public interest news for Merseyside.