How to pledge allegiance (to the Spy)

Help us bring reader-funded local journalism to London

Morning — the Spy is taking a short break over the Coronation weekend, but we thought we’d take the opportunity to thank all of you for reading over the past few months.

We’re having a lot of fun reporting on London for you, from the political rumours at City Hall, to debates about London’s parks, to the underbelly of e-bike hacking. It’s only been three months since we started sleuthing and yet we’re now really close to our first big milestone — 500 subscribers. It’s so thrilling to see there’s an appetite out there for in-depth journalism about our city.

That growth is getting us excited about what the Spy could become. At the moment we’re journalists with day jobs, squeezing the Spy into our evenings and weekends. But imagine what we could do if one member of our team could go full-time — more investigations, cultural guides, or visual pieces. So at some point in the future, we’d love to offer a paid option for Spy readers, letting you support our journalism while keeping our core reporting free for all Londoners.

But if you’re enjoying what we’re doing right now, there’s already a great way to show your support: by pledging. Don’t worry — it won’t mean swearing allegiance to us and our successors, so help you God. Instead, our newsletter platform, Substack, gives us a way to tell how many readers are willing to pay for the Spy.

You won’t pay anything right away. Instead, your pledge will only activate when we launch paid subscriptions later down the line. That’s still some way off, but pledging early is a great way to show us you think the Spy is valuable.

You can just tap the button below to pledge, but just ping us an email if you’re having trouble figuring out how to get there on Substack.

Thanks again, everybody. We’ll be back with more stories on Thursday.

Cheers,

The Spy team 🕵️