3,000 Subscribers!
Celebrating our latest milestone with a look to the future and my personal recommendations on food, coffee and things to do in the city…
Dear Knotters,
I’m delighted to share that we’ve crossed the threshold to 3,000 subscribers! 3,064 people now receive good news, what’s on, things to do, and feature journalism for Stoke-on-Trent and Staffordshire direct to their inbox every week!
I saw the 3,000th subscriber roll in while checking my emails in the queue for an acai bowl at a new spot in Newcastle-under-Lyme. Breeze Bowls has just opened, and the queue was out the door. I’d picked the “Fuel your flow” and was stood flicking through my emails post Trentham Gardens park run and needed my feed. My hunger abated as I silently fist pumped this win. I’m really pleased with our progress, especially considering we are a part -time team. I celebrated with a coffee from my favourite spot in Newcastle.
(More of my personal recommendations and a look into what features we have coming up for paid subscribers below) ⬇️
Thank you to our paid subscribers and patrons for helping us get this far. Thanks to you, we have a model that enables us to pay our team of freelance writers to curate the news, events, and topics that matter to you. Plus, we’re now bringing you entertaining content on social media and the occasional feature story. This is down to your support.
Recently, we have been capturing video interviews and documenting local spots and events to go to. We’ve interviewed former Kerrang! art director Krusher Joule, Matt Dimbleby of Kiln at No.12, Peter Jukes of Byline Times and featured progress at the Goods Yard. Seeing hopelessly negative, racist and critical Facebook comments always causes me to shake my head in disbelief. Yet, it’s important to remember that there are thousands of passive onlookers who are perfectly reasonable and a loud minority who dominate the narrative on social media. I chose to focus on the former, not the latter.
We’ve been proactively writing about bigger topics that matter to people too. Helen’s recent piece on Reform’s leadership of Staffordshire County Council showed that with time and resources we can be directly reaching out to politicians and local leaders asking them the questions that matter to us and not just recycling the press releases they send us all. We can provide fair and balanced journalism that shares facts without leaning to one side.
Feature journalism like this is something that we are committed to doing more of, and over the coming months, we will be bringing more of it to you. That’s why it’s so important we generate revenue through paid subscriptions. Every penny goes towards paying for writing and journalism. If you’re considering supporting our mission in this way, please do.
For £5 a month or £50 a year you can help us bring good quality news and information to Stoke-on-Trent and North Staffordshire.
If you’d like to chat to me about becoming a patron (individual) or headline sponsor (business). Email me on james@theknot.group 📧
To all 3,000+ of you, thank you for being on this journey with us. We’re building something special and I truly believe that The Knot can be a platform to inspire positive change in Stoke-on-Trent and North Staffordshire.
If you’re a paid subscriber, keep reading to find out what features we have coming up and get my personal recommendations on food, coffee and things to do across Stoke and Staffordshire this summer.
Cheers,
James x