The green energy entrepreneur and Labour donor Dale Vince is planning to launch a London-wide news operation, as part of a “rescue” of one of the capital’s most highly regarded local newspapers.
Vince, who has vowed to take on what he sees as rightwing bias in the UK media, said he would invest “whatever it takes” to support the loss-making group behind the Camden New Journal (CNJ), Islington Tribune and Westminster Extra.
He told the Guardian he was already looking at expanding the Westminster edition to cover London-wide issues, in an attempt to serve a city in which a series of major newsrooms have closed or drastically shrunk over the past 20 years.
“We’re going to go forward together to put the CNJ on a better financial footing and take it digital – properly digital,” he said. “At the same time, [we will] get behind the Westminster edition and make that an edition for the wider London area.
“I think London is missing a local paper now, with the demise of a couple that have gone before. It’s quite a bold plan, that we might morph the Westminster edition.
“We might call it the north, south, east and Westminster edition, in a kind of nod to our intended larger audience.”
Vince’s rescue package for the titles, which has not been formally finalised, is one of several attempts being made to revitalise local journalism in London. Despite its 9m population, media outlets have struggled to support large London-focused newsrooms.
The Evening Standard, which has been published for almost 200 years, shut down its daily newspaper in 2024. It was replaced with a weekly edition renamed the London Standard, with a greater focus on arts and culture.
Other attempts to run daily freesheets failed. The London Paper, launched by Rupert Murdoch’s News International, now News UK, closed in 2009 after just three years. Its rival, London Lite, published by the owner of the Daily Mail, closed later that year.
Meanwhile, Metro, a national freesheet distributed in UK cities including London, is undergoing major structural changes to put it on a “sustainable footing”.
However, journalism focused on London has been boosted in recent years by the arrival of small, subscription-based operations.
Jim Waterson, a former Guardian journalist who founded the London Centric news site that now has more than 5,000 paying subscribers, said Vince had chosen to help a local group that had resisted “the disastrous choice in the 2010s to abandon quality for chasing clicks at all costs”.
However, he said the success of his own “back-to-basics local journalism” outlet was still “only enough money to support a tiny operation that’s still run from a kitchen table”.
“Vince has also realised that London is also one of the UK’s worst local news deserts,” Waterson said. “The challenge that we all face is how to get the funding to grow our audience without becoming financially unsustainable.”
While not large, the Camden New Journal group still employs 18 people, according to recent financial records. It spent a chunk of its cash reserves in the last year.
Vince said he was not supporting the Camden New Journal and its related titles “for business reasons”.
“I’m motivated by the impact of local journalism,” he said. “I’m motivated by the bias of media in our country more broadly – the rightwing bias – and trying to do something about that.”
Vince has already launched an online publication, Babelfish. He said he would consider writing comment pieces for the London titles, but would generally be a “hands-off” investor.
“Big picture-wise, I’ve got a view of the world and how things should be, and the Camden people already fit within that,” he said. “There’s no kind of culture clash and I write op-eds for all kinds of people already. I would absolutely write op-eds for the Camden [New Journal], but it wouldn’t be a requirement.”
