Get us over the line

Dear readers – the approach of Christmas can stir up strong emotions. Excitement, at the prospect of time with loved ones. Sorrow, as you realise that — no matter how many hints you drop — your nearest and dearest aren’t buying you that £250 Lego set.

And, for the disorganised, creeping dread: you can no longer ignore the unbought gifts; online shopping deadlines have passed; and your only recourse is a last-minute foray to a heaving Meadowhall/a whistle stop tour of lovely local independents (delete as appropriate).

We’re also feeling anxious – but for a different reason. We’ve had a pretty hectic last month here; probing council finances, Gatecrashing Simon Raine’s party, and getting the inside track on Tamper. We’ve been working our very socks off to bring you the best scoops and features, all the while being battered with various legal threats. We’ve also been designing up our new website, which we hope you agree looks gorgeous.

But for us, time is running out. Every door opened on the advent calendar is one door closer to discovering our fate, and we barely register pleasure as we gnaw on the choccy within.

Because we’ve set ourselves a big goal – one we’re desperate to hit by NYE. Either we’ll get our Hollywood ending, and toast in 2025 with a song in our heart and a sparkle in our eyes. Or we’ll be weeping into a glass of flat prosecco, wondering just where things went so horribly wrong. Remarkably, you can influence the outcome.

So here’s that goal. We have been straining, stretching, and striving to get to 2,500 Tribune members this year. This number haunts our sleepless hours. Every day we open up the trusty Tribune dashboard and draw the latest data point on our whiteboard graph, muttering calculations under our breath. We were at 2,000 in January, and we’re still about 50 short.

That milestone has been in view for a long time now, and we really want 2024 to be the year we get there. Firstly, it would give us a lovely morale boost at the end of the year. It would make our longer term target of 5,000 – around 1% of Sheffield's population – look achievable. But more importantly, it would make a statement about the kind of journalism Sheffield supports: in depth, high quality, well told.

Yes, we know that what we ask for — £7.42 a month, if you pay for a year upfront — isn’t nothing. But it is cheaper than all of the following:

• Spotify premium
• Amazon prime
• Netflix standard subscription
• Apple TV+ subscription

And there’s a vital difference: with us, your money isn’t disappearing off to a far away, tax-evading, conglomerate. It’s paying the salaries of local people to do important local work. It’s half a gift to yourself — getting more of our insightful journalism — and half a gift to your city.

With 2,500 people on board, we can start planning for a bigger and better 2025. We would love to take on one more journalist next year. That extra person would free up a lot more time for the big investigations we know that readers really appreciate. But we can only do that if it’s financially viable. For that, we need more members.

So could you be one of our missing 50?

Perhaps you signed up to our mailing list after reading something that really struck a chord with you, and want more of that from us. Now’s the time.

Perhaps you think Sheffield needs to get better, and want to support some people trying to help. Now’s the time.

Perhaps you’ve been meaning to get around to it for a while. Now’s the time.

Flash forward to New Year’s Eve. As the hour draws towards midnight, conversation inevitably turns to new year’s resolutions. Most of these will crash and burn — after all, January is probably the worst month to take up running. But here’s one you can achieve: becoming more connected to your city. Picture yourself smugly informing your co-revellers that you’ve already signed up to receive regular updates, big stories, and insider recommendations. Perhaps they could save the cash on that new gym membership and do the same? 

But please don’t leave it until then before adding your name to the 2,500 push. Our nerves won’t be able to cope. In fact, the safest thing to do would be to press that lovely orange button right now, before the Christmas chaos sets in. Then we can see in the New Year with the wind in our sails, and a very clear message to those who try to silence us: Sheffield has our back.