London’s independent online journalism - or “blogosphere”, if you must - is, like the mainstream kind, of varied character and variable quality. Its good, bad and ugly manifestations alike tend to come and go, as early enthusiasm for that single issue blog or community website wanes or the need to earn a living devours the time available for an activity that doesn’t much help pay the rent.
The capital does, though, have some interwebby enterprises that have not only survived but thrived. Londonist, which celebrates its tenth birthday in the coming week, is among the best of them. Clear, eclectic and handsome to behold, it covers just about everything lovers of London care about and does it with a passion that reminds us why we found the metropolis, for all its flaws, so enthralling in the first place.
There’s news, reviews, quality political coverage and guides to low cost things to do. Its features walk you down forgotten paths of London history. A podcast appears regularly. The mix includes micro-fiction too. Drawn together, these disparate elements neatly capture the London many Londoners live in and care about: lively, vivid, always changing, sometimes fraught, dazzlingly heterogeneous and never, ever dull.
Londonist had a short former life as a news digest site called The Big Smoker, but changed its name after its founders Rob Hinchcliffe and Euan Mitchell hooked up with New York’s Gothamist mega-blog. There were half a dozen writers, including a Peckham shopkeeper, a cat-sitter, a stand-up comedian and Matt Brown, a proud London obsessive (“I get a nose bleed if I move beyond the M25”), who became Londonist’s editor in 2006.
By then, the site’s range of interests and pool of contributors had grown, and in 2010 Brown and the team decided to turn their hobby into a business. Londonist makes its money from advertising and carefully chosen, firmly disciplined sponsored content. They hosts events and have formed partnerships with Totally Thames and the Museum of London. Brown, though, stresses that the operation remains collegiate and contributor-driven. One of the strengths of Londonist is that feels that way. About a million people read the site every month, adding up to almost three million page views.
Brown has now stepped down from the helm, leaving former Scout London editor James Drury and managing editor Lindsey Clarke in charge. He’s become editor-at-large instead, giving him more time to discover yet more steeples, plague pits and emerging coffee shop chains. Happy birthday Londonist. Long may you grow.
