It's not Medway, it's Medwayish

Introducing our latest niche venture

Editor’s note: It’s been a fairly quiet week here on Local Authority. Summer tends to be the quietest time for news, and it’s been our birthday week, so we haven’t had quite as much to put out this week. Normal service resumes tomorrow with a jam-packed Friday edition and we’ve got some big things coming up next week. In the meantime, we’d like to tell you about our new venture that sits alongside Local Authority in an attempt to put us on a more sustainable footing.

It’s not exactly a secret that there isn’t a huge amount of money in local news these days. Revenue has been in free fall for years, and no one seems to have figured out the ideal model to make things work. Our model revolves around paid subscriptions, and we’re incredibly grateful to the generous readers who support our work. We believe in this model, and we see a long-term route to sustainability, but we’re eager to do more and do it sooner.

As such, we have launched what is effectively a commercial arm of Local Authority. We’d like to introduce Medwayish:

Medwayish is our new online store offering unique Medway-related products and gifts from local creatives. While there are some incredible artists out there making Medway-related items, it’s not been possible to find an entire store of them in one place until now. Best of all, profits from Medwayish feed directly back into our news operation allowing us to provide even better journalism for Medway.

We’ve worked with local creatives like Nick Ashton, Esther Johnson, Mark Barnes, David Frankum, Heather Haythornwaite, and more to put together a unique collection of Medway-related products. Mugs featuring Waghorn, Dickens, and other Medway figures in a lineup? A book on the history of Medway music? A t-shirt depicting Chatham as a zombie hellscape? More postcards than you can shake a stick at? We’ve got it all.

You can see the full set of products on the shiny new Medwayish website, and right now you can get free delivery when you spend £25 with the code FREE25 at checkout.

If you prefer to do things a little more old school, we’re popping up at some markets with a full stall of items for sale, including a few that aren’t even listed on the website yet. You can find us at the following:

• Rochester City Vintage & Artisan Market this Saturday (26 August) on Rochester High Street. We’ll be located somewhere near the Two Brewers.

• Art Flea Fair at Sun Pier House next Saturday (2 September).

Finally, if you’re a creative who is interested in working with us to stock your Medway-related items or would like to discuss developing something brand new, feel free to get in touch with us via medwayish@gmail.com - we’d love to hear your ideas!

Thanks for indulging us in this rather promotional post. We’re back to the actual news tomorrow, where we’ve got a full lineup of stories from across our towns, including a grim response to Pride, Barack Obama’s connection to the Deangate Ridge plans, another anti-Semitic attack in Chatham and, in a depressing parallel, the venue hosting a conspiracy theorist accused of anti-Semitism, plus lots more.

Until tomorrow.

Footnotes

Music that soundtracked the creation of this edition: Birdie by Slaughter Beach, Dog.