This morning, 1,009 of you will see this headline. Which means we’ve quietly crossed a milestone that feels worth marking: 1,000 daily subscribers to Putney.news.
When you add in our 150 weekly digest readers and the 40,000 locals who visit the site each month, that’s a lot of Putney residents staying informed about what’s happening in SW15. Not bad for a patch with about 75,000 people in it.
But the real story isn’t the number – it’s what you’ve shown us about what matters to you.
You told us what you cared about, and we listened
Take last week. Yes, it was heavy on transport news. But you’ve consistently told us that Putney Bridge Junction and the traffic chaos across Putney is your number one concern right now. And for good reason.
So when Thursday’s Transport Committee meeting rolled around – with a council report finally explaining what went wrong and what they plan to do about it – we decided to lean in.
A story every day in the lead-up. Deep analysis. Guides on how to get involved. And then a rapid survey. An incredible 763 of you filled it in – nine questions, not a simple one among them. We took those results straight to the council and… well… we all went through the Looking Glass. But we’re not giving up, and neither should you.
Over 50 of you signed up last week (with five current subscribers switching to the weekly digest, possibly from transport fatigue). But more than that, it showed what’s possible when a community pays attention together.
What’s coming next
We’ve got a lot in the pipeline. The weekly events digest is finally launching soon – particularly useful with everything happening between now and Christmas. Events will start appearing in the daily email too, along with a simple weather box so you can see what the day ahead looks like.
We’re growing the team. Clelia is joining us to cover community events – the wonderful organisations and communities that make Putney special. Another two people have expressed interest in covering topics that matter to you and we hope they will join us soon.
At some point we’ll even get an admin person so you don’t have to wait days for a response to your emails. (We know. We’re sorry. We’re working on it.)
Keeping the momentum
These six months have been glorious. Meeting so many of you. Covering your stories. And we’re just getting started.
We’ll keep helping protect local businesses, Capability Brown landscapes from sports companies, and cover new companies that start up. We’ll keep an eye on the council – and even when they fail to act on crystal clear feedback and evidence, we’ll make it difficult for them to claim they didn’t know about it.
More about what people are up to around us: the wins, the big events, culture, shopping, leisure, pleasure and family.
More data efforts and visualisations. A new system to reveal all the FOI work that goes on behind the scenes to get the information we use. And campaigns on the things that matter to you: rebuilding the High Street, step-free access at East Putney tube, making more use of the riverside, more public toilets, fixing the bus timetable screens and, yes, getting that damn junction fixed.
The more of us who know what’s going on, the more we can push together as a community with a shared sense of what needs doing.
Thank you
For reading. For your warm words and support. For your story suggestions and event submissions. For filling in surveys and turning up to meetings and caring about this place we all call home.
We’ll be back in touch when we hit 2,000 daily readers.
Until then, there’s news to cover.
Well done and well deserved.
I’m so pleased to have found Putney News – so informative and well written. A great asset for Putney! Thank you.
Well done team! It’s such a worthwhile and cherished facility! We love reading your daily updates. Thank you
Congratulations, I am new to Putney News but it’s already proved invaluable. Thank you for all the hard work.