A network of subscription-based local news titles is to double its headcount with the creation of 11 new jobs across five cities.

Mill Media has announced it is aiming to recruit a clutch of new journalists with pay rates of between £25,000 and £50,000 a year.

Since its initial launch in Manchester by Joshi Herrmann, Mill Media has expanded into Liverpool, Sheffield and Birmingham and now plans to extend its presence to two more cities – Glasgow and London.

The job advertisement for the new roles sets out an ambition for the company to become a “really significant player” in the future of news media.

It reads: “Exactly four years ago today, Mill Media was born – a new company based on a simple approach: giving journalists the time they need to write great stories.

“We focused on an American-style of magazine journalism in which writers are able to dive deep into a wide range of topics and editors have a key role in shaping and improving what we publish.

“We also did something that feels retro in the age of the scale-obsessed internet: we turned our lens on the local, with each of our titles covering a different city in depth – building a strong connection with an audience and persuading them to send us stories and become paying subscribers.

“Since June 2020, this approach has turned Mill Media into a new force in British journalism.

“Last year, we raised money from a group of our readers, including the CNN chief executive and former New York Times and BBC boss Mark Thompson, who said he was investing because of the “exceptional quality” of our work.

“We’re now ready to use that investment to expand faster than we have done before, doubling the size of our team by the end of 2024 and expanding our presence to two more cities: Glasgow and London.

“The reason we raised money was so that we could take our model to more places, hire more journalists and turn this company into a really significant player in the future of media.

“Launching titles in Glasgow and London – two of the UK’s great media hubs and both cities that need more high quality local journalism – is a major step towards that.”

The 11 new roles will include six staff writers in Manchester, Birmingham, Liverpool, Glasgow and two in London, assistant editors in Manchester and London, a copy editor in Manchester and a social media/video specialist, also in Manchester.

The recruitment drive will be staggered across the remainder of 2024, with four roles appointed in June/July, four in August/September, and three in October/November.

Mill Media now has 7,750 paying members across its titles, and just over 110,000 free subscribers on its mailing lists.

Joshi, pictured, made clear that the decision to launch in London had been taken in the light of the Evening Standard’s recent decision to go from daily to weekly publication.

He said: “I’m incredibly excited about the hires we’re making this year and our new launches. This company has come so far since I started out on my own in June 2020, but this will be the fastest phase of our expansion, and the timing feels right for it.

“We are both strengthening our teams on our existing titles in order to deepen our coverage and expanding to two further cities: Glasgow and London.

“When we raised money last year from a group of readers including Sir Mark Thompson, Dame Diane Coyle and others, I immediately heard from several journalists in Glasgow who said our model of long-form local journalism would be very welcome there.

“So I’m really glad we can now commit resources to launching a new title in Glasgow this summer. It’s an absolutely brilliant city and is the traditional home of Scottish journalism, so I know we will find lots of great writers and editors who want to contribute.

“Our decision to launch in London is more recent. Watching the mayoral race earlier this year, I realised our brand of journalism would add something – for example by providing in-depth data analysis of crime in the capital to fact-check what the parties were saying, or publishing deeply reported pieces about what was driving voting patterns.

“Then last week’s news that the Evening Standard is stopping printing a daily paper after almost 200 years was the clincher. I started my career on the Standard, and it’s been sad to see it getting noticeably thinner every time I come down to London from Manchester.

“If even a city the size of London can’t sustain a daily paper, it shows just how broken the traditional model of local news has become.

“I think a city of London’s importance needs high-quality journalism, and we want to be part of providing that.”