Welcome to Proper Cardiff News

Local journalism is more important than it has ever been. 

We all need to understand what is really going on in our local area.

Unfortunately, local news has seen relentless cuts over the last two decades. That means stories affecting our communities are increasingly told by groups with ill intentions, leaving us all exposed to misinformation. It also means the place we’re proud to call home can be represented in a negative light that doesn't reflect the truth.

That’s why we’ve created Proper Cardiff News. 

Too often, local journalism just tells you what happened, but that is only part of the story. Uncovering why things happen and who profits in the end is just as vital.

We love Cardiff. It is our city and we want to help the people of the Welsh capital better understand it. 

We want to know who’s behind that new building flying up. What happened to the promises your councillor made five years ago? Why does it still take an age to travel across the city by bus, and where are all those new train stations?

We want to follow the money behind the decisions shaping Cardiff and ask the critical questions. 

But we also want to champion the people of this city and celebrate all the good that is going on. We want to have fun telling stories about the city’s characters and quirks. We’ve spent long enough planning this, and I am so excited to get busy delivering quality original journalism about our city directly to your inbox.

And I couldn’t be more thrilled with the team I have around me ready to produce unmissable stories about the Welsh capital. They’re all fantastic and I’m proud to find myself working with journalists of such a calibre.

Our co-founder Catrin Pascoe built her reputation over a decade-long tenure as editor of Wales’ national daily, the Western Mail, scooping countless awards and many more exclusives along the way. Our second co-founder Will Hayward is regarded as Wales' leading independent political journalist whose reporting helped expose the controversy surrounding Vaughan Gething’s £200,000 campaign donation.

Conor Gogarty is known for his fearless investigations. Working undercover, Conor reported on the disgraceful inner workings, pressure-selling tactics, and manipulation of young employees undertaken by two door-to-door sales firms in Cardiff. That story led to the closure of those firms and an industry-wide inquiry. Conor is also recognisable as the bloke who confronts recent defendants on the steps of Cardiff’s courts and treats them to a free photo shoot (often, but not always, accepted reluctantly).

I spent several years as a news editor managing a small team of reporters in south Wales. As a journalist, I broke news of a nightclub company’s receipt of a £92,000 grant to “safe-guard jobs” weeks before making its workforce redundant, and what became of a teenage killer 25 years after she was convicted at Cardiff Crown Court for the murder of a pensioner.

In short, we’re going back to journalism basics and cutting out the crap. No clickbait. Proper news, features, and analysis that you want to read and we want to write.

But doing this properly takes time and we need support if we’re going to make a news service like this sustainable.

Proper Cardiff News will only work if enough people believe this kind of local journalism is worth supporting. So, to help us get started, we’re offering 23% off to the first 200 people who become paying subscribers, as a thank you for an early show of faith.

And if you want to go further, you can become a founding member and receive (apart from my heartfelt thanks) an invitation to meet the team, visit our newsroom and chat about the issues that matter to you, and what we have planned.

The first edition of Proper Cardiff News will land later this month.

We want Proper Cardiff News to be a publication telling the stories you think are meaningful. So if you have questions about a decision or an issue you think deserves attention, let us know. We’re always up for a chat.

Send tips to newsdesk@propercardiff.news. 

Thanks so much for taking the time to read.

Marcus
Editor

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