Dear readers — we just wanted to send a quick note, to thank every single person who’s supported our first campaign by becoming a paying member of The Bell. We’ve smashed what felt like a pretty ambitious target of 1600 paying subscribers (in addition to our 20,000 people on our free list) and it's all thanks to you guys.
Obviously we are delighted. It means that we can keep doing the journalism we love, the investigations, deep dives and analysis that take weeks rather than hours. But what means even more to us is what this says about Glasgow. There’s a story that gets told about this city: that it’s in decline, nothing works and nothing can change. We don’t agree.
Glasgow deserves scrutiny; it deserves journalism that asks difficult questions, exposes failures and holds powerful people to account. We’ll never stop doing that. But there's a difference between being cynical about the people and institutions in charge, and giving up on the city. The Bell exists because we think Glasgow is worth believing in.
Not in a cheesy ‘everything’s brilliant’ kind of way. We know this city has problems; we report on them every week. But we also think Glasgow is full of excellent people, great ideas and communities trying to make things better. We think it’s a city worth investing in, worth understanding and worth fighting for. Your support tells us you do too.
Sixteen hundred people have decided that Glasgow deserves journalism that is ambitious and curious and believes this city is interesting enough to dig deeper.
So thank you for backing us. Thank you for believing in what we’re trying to build. This is just the start, we’ve got some huge stories coming, more events and other exciting bits up our sleeve. We’re going to do some great stuff together.
And if you’re not yet a full-time member of The Bell, but you like the sound of what we’re doing, well: the button is below.
