One year of Pimlico Journal. What next?

Introducing our paid newsletter, and some other exciting announcements

Substack appears to have glitched and sent this post out twice. You can see the other version of the post here. Apologies for any confusion, and for filling up your inbox needlessly!

Dear reader,

In the August of last year, over drinks at a Pimlico pub, dissatisfied with existing publications on the Right for too many reasons to count, we decided to start the Pimlico Journal.

We soon got to work and, since we began publishing last October, we have amassed close to 300,000 views (or in other words, nearly 4,000 views per article). Long-form written content is only of interest to a small minority, and supply of it outstrips demand to a comical degree; as such, these numbers are nothing to sniff at.

We have been referenced or mentioned— both positively and negatively — by outlets as varied as Unherd, The Daily Sceptic, The Critic, History Reclaimed, The New Statesman, Caribbean Rhythms, Kontrast.dk, and a number of far-left podcasts and outlets, as well on prominent Substacks including, but not limited to, those of Matt Goodwin, Rod Dreher, Stone Age Herbalist, and Ed West. Seems like a very good ‘hit rate’ for a publication that only has seventy-nine articles (now eighty).

We have also influenced national debate. We understand that our regular readership includes a number of very prominent writers, journalists, and academics; many special advisers and think-tankers; and even some parliamentarians. But beyond our influential readership, our article on cousin marriage and Pakistan has been cited twice in peer-reviewed academic work. Figures from our article on social housing in London earned a mention on national television. Our article on drugs was even translated into Lithuanian, as a reader hoped that it might influence discussions over there too. Our work on immigration and housing has clearly contributed to a growing consensus on the British Right that — quite apart from any other objections you may have — mass, low-skill migration has also had a negative impact on the British economy.

All of this has been achieved from effectively a standing start. Not only do we have no outside funding: we do not pay our contributors at all (aside from the occasional pint), and we have no ‘big names’ — indeed, almost all of our contributors use pseudonyms, and often entirely new ones — that will automatically get us a substantial readership. And yet, we have been reliably informed that our numbers, especially on a per article basis, outcompete some non-paywalled outfits that are funded by their sponsor(s) to the tune of tens or even hundreds of thousands of pounds a year. Yes, really!

Without wishing to brag too much, we think the reason for this is simple. There is something of a dearth of high-quality, right-wing, Britain-focused content, especially when it comes to content that is of interest to younger people. We are tapping into a market that has been ignored, or at least badly served, for a very long time. We firmly believe that over the past year, Pimlico Journal has been publishing some of the highest quality content that can be found on the British Right; and in particular, we think that our consistency is nearly unrivalled.

We are particularly proud of the variety of content that we have published. From the start, we did not want to become a ‘single-issue’ Substack; writing five or more articles a month purely on immigration, for instance. Immigration is obviously very, very important, but we have other interests too. Our output thus far has, to some, probably seemed somewhat eclectic. Even beyond our semi-regular travel articles, some of our personal favourite articles have been on topics as varied as the history of Switzerland, the widely-panned television series The Idol, and gypsy music in Romania. Despite this variety, I think most would agree that we have still managed to maintain a highly distinctive editorial line.

We are always looking for new contributors, without whom Pimlico Journal could not exist. Almost all of our contributors were originally readers. If you have already written for us — thank you! If you are interested in writing for us, or indeed have any other enquiries or suggestions, feel free to send us a DM on X — either to our new account, @PimlicoJournal (make sure to follow us if you aren’t already!), or to editor-in-chief @NigelForrester9. Alternatively, send an email to pimlicojournal@substack.com.

A final point: since Elon Musk took over X, formerly known as Twitter, links have been extraordinarily heavily suppressed on the platform. As such, in order to achieve further growth, we are more reliant than ever upon you sharing our articles with your friends. Know anyone who might enjoy our articles? Make sure to tell them about us.

What next?

Despite us offering nothing in exchange, and indeed never even directly asking for money, a good number of our readers have already chosen to support our work by upgrading to a paid subscription. By upgrading, you are paying for our time as editors, helping push British politics in the right (and indeed, the Right) direction.

Here at Pimlico Journal, we are firmly committed to keeping our core offering — that is to say, between six and nine long-form articles monthly — completely free. Creating this product is time-consuming, and is not something that will be possible for us to keep up without either some kind of sponsor who is likely to compromise our editorial independence, or your help.

It is often said that a paywall puts you in an impossible position: you can’t only paywall your best content (which would stymy growth and influence), but you can’t only paywall the dross (which would be insulting to those who do pay). The only other option is to try and write twice as much of identical quality and paywall half of it, choosing seemingly randomly, but such a high quantity of output would, in our view, not be sustainable for us in the long term.

In any case, Pimlico Journal is not merely a money-making operation: we are proud of the influence that we have clearly already had on British political discourse, and hope that this will continue. Paywalling our core offering is obviously antithetical to these aims. Moreover, we do not currently pay our contributors — hopefully, we will be able to do so once we are a bit more established — so it would seem rather odd to paywall this content, even if the editors usually have put a lot of effort and time into improving the prose and sharpening the arguments of many of these articles, given that most of our writers have no connection to journalism or any adjacent field.

As such, rather than walling off any of our main content, we are instead hoping to sidestep this problem by offering different products altogether for paid subscribers: firstly, a paid newsletter from next Monday; and secondly, a podcast, from some time in the first half of 2025.

From next Monday, we will begin publishing a paid newsletter, released every Monday at 6:00am, just in time for your morning ‘back to work’ commute. (If you are still a student, or ‘slacking from home’, feel free to read later in the day.) Most weeks, we will also send in an additional newsletter — either on Wednesday or after a particularly noteworthy event — but only if we feel we actually have enough to write about: there is already enough writing out there on the internet, so we don’t want to needlessly clog up inboxes, or feel we have to have an opinion on everything (the columnist’s curse). It might be that we do feel we always have enough to say twice a week; if this is the case, we will formally move to a bi-weekly schedule.

What will be contained in the paid newsletter, starting next Monday?

Firstly, it will provide coverage of what is immediately happening. While our core offering is not exactly ‘slow news’, the publication of a monthly schedule which we try not to deviate from means that we do not necessarily respond immediately (or indeed at all) to recent political events. Although we will still avoid genuine ‘rigmarole’, for those who are interested in our more ‘day-to-day’ commentary, the newsletter will be where you can find it. We also hope to have more community engagement on the newsletter than is typical of our core offering, owing to us not wanting to give the impression that we necessarily speak for the author.

The newsletter will — we hope — not come across as dashed off; a pile of links or posts on X that the author ‘finds interesting’, or a regurgitation of the FT’s daily briefing with a few clichéd right-wing thoughts attached. It will be something rather more substantial, containing actual analysis — hence the proposed weekly (rather than, say, daily) schedule.

Secondly, it will contain other ideas that we do not (yet) consider to be substantial enough to be the basis of a full-length article, or ideas that we are considering developing more fully at a later date. We always tell those with pitches that we are inclined to reject any article short enough that it may as well just be a X thread. As such, our articles generally have an implicit minimum word count of around 1,500 words, and the average article is probably closer to 3,500 words — quite substantial. Not everything we want to say, even if valuable, easily fits into such a format. The newsletter will give us an opportunity to explore these ideas.

After (hopefully) garnering a reasonable number of paid subscribers from the newsletter, in the first half of 2025 — possibly around April, depending on how busy we are in our regular lives — we are also planning to launch the Pimlico Journal podcast.

What will the podcast, starting next year, most likely be like?

Rather than right-wing ‘chit chat’ — which is already available elsewhere — or focusing on discussions with guests — which would inevitably be of varied quality — we will instead endeavour to create something more intellectually serious and well-prepared, somewhat akin to The Rest Is History, but with a more right-wing slant.

Whether this will be delivered as a monologue (like Bronze Age Pervert or Scott Greer) or — more likely, given the unusual talent that monologues require — by two or three regular presenters is something we will experiment with and decide closer to launch.

Currently, a paid subscription costs £8 a month (£80 for an annual subscription). Once the podcast is up and running, we will increase the price to £10 a month (£100 for an annual subscription), but existing subscriptions will be grandfathered in at the old rate. And, if you subscribe by the end of this month, you will get 10% off the for the next twelve months — so be sure to subscribe now!

Here’s to another great year,

Nigel Forrester Editor-in-chief, Pimlico Journal