Taking some time away from The Tribune

Good afternoon readers. I hope you’re having an enjoyable and relaxing Sunday.

This is just a little note to say I’m going to be taking some time off over the next week, and that we’ll be running a reduced publication schedule as a result. I’m not going anywhere special: just down to London to see some friends and enjoy our capital’s cultural riches. Before Covid I used to go down there twice a year but because of the pandemic and then being busy with The Tribune, I’ve not managed to visit since December 2019.

I don’t find taking time off an easy thing to do. Since I first started The Tribune more than 18 months ago, I’ve only actually taken two weeks’ holiday in total. Why this might be is an interesting question. It’s certainly not because I’m not allowed to take time off. In fact it’s positively encouraged. But I do find it hard to let go of the thing I’ve helped create and forget about it for a while. I feel it’s still fragile and needs constant tending if it is to survive.

Running a tiny startup largely on my own has been a massive challenge and I’ve thrown everything at it over the last year and a half. Leaving a secure job at an established title was a huge risk but I strongly believed that journalism could be more than the increasingly thin gruel which was being offered up by the regional news publishers. The success we’ve had so far shows that gamble has paid off — but I can’t deny it’s been very hard work.

However, I can’t fight the inevitable forever. So occasionally, and very reluctantly, I do need to take the odd day or week off here and there just to recharge my journalistic batteries. Over the next week The Tribune will be putting out just one or two stories rather than the usual three. I’ll be back with next week’s Monday briefing on 5 December. We hope you understand.

My hope is that in future, when The Tribune has more staff members, readers won’t know the difference when I’m off. But we’re not quite at that stage yet. Earlier this month, our sister title The Mill managed to break-even after two and a half years in operation when they reached 1,500 members. The Tribune is currently at 940 members and we think our break-even point will be around 1,200.

Any help you can give us to enable us to get there will be hugely appreciated, either by buying a subscription for yourself or as a gift for someone else. The reason we’ve come so far in such a short space of time is entirely down to you. But we just need a few more of the almost 12,000 of you who we know read and enjoy our journalism week in week out to become members so we can move onto the next stage of our journey.

Thanks for reading.

Dan Hayes

Editor, The Tribune