Putney · Roehampton · SW15
Local news disappeared. It’s time to bring it back.
I’m Kieren McCarthy. I started Putney.news because a place with 100,000 people needs to know what’s happening, and it needs the people in charge to explain their decisions. So I started asking.
How it started
Putney.news began in March 2024 because I wanted to know what was happening where I live and found it hard to find out. Events only surfaced once they had already happened; I became aware of new shops only when I happened to walk past them; social media raised more questions than it ever answered. Coverage of Putney as a place and a community was almost non-existent. So the site began as a way to find out what was going on, and sharing it with my neighbours along the way.
Two years on, it has been one of the most rewarding things I have done in my career, not least because of how positively you, readers and neighbours, have responded. It turns out there was a good reason every part of the country used to have its own local paper. It is time to bring them back.
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What we actually do
A small newsroom, doing work larger outlets no longer do.
We hold power to account
We track what the council actually does, not just what it announces. We file freedom-of-information requests, chase the answers, and publish what we find, including when the answer is silence.
We help you navigate where you live
Planning, transport, what is opening, what is closing, what is changing on your street, and what you can do about it. The practical business of living somewhere.
We celebrate the place
The people, the businesses, the small things that make Putney what it is. A paper that only criticises is exhausting to read and exhausting to write. The good stuff matters too.
“It’s the only publication we still have to hold Wandsworth Council’s feet to the fire. The rest is, well, silence.”Putney.news reader
A personal note
My career started as a sub-editor and then a reporter on computer industry titles, before a move to one of earliest internet-only publications, The Register, where I specialised in how the internet actually works and the organisations that govern it. I ended up working for several of those organisations, and that work took me all over the world, developing the tools and policies that keep its early promise alive. I still sit on the board of one of them.
The internet remains the single biggest force in our lives, an extraordinary tool for communication and knowledge. But it has also fractured communities, in part by failing to give people true, honest information about what is actually happening around them.
Our traditional local paper, now the Wimbledon and Wandsworth Times, has, at the time of writing, run just two stories about Putney in the past month: coverage so thin it barely exists. Technology could make us more connected than ever to daily life where we live; instead, coverage has gone the other way.
My goal is to entirely flip that: so that if you live near Putney High Street you know about tomorrow’s event, not last week’s; if you live in Southfields, you hear about the development one road over without having to check every lamppost for a notice; wherever you are, in West or East Putney, West Hill, Wandsworth Town or Roehampton, you can find out what is happening without needing to watch two hours of committee footage.
The information that interests you and impacts you, sent to you, in time for you to act on it.
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Where this goes
That is what is being built here. Not just for Putney.
At the moment it is a small team. But we now have the proof that the model works: national-standard local journalism, at the cost of running a neighbourhood newsroom, that people actually read and act on. Membership funds the next step.
- 01More of Southwest LondonSouthfields, West Hill, Wandsworth Town, Roehampton: the same coverage, extended street by street.
- 02News while it is still usefulThe event tomorrow, not the one that already happened. The development before it is approved.
- 03Every decision explainedWithout you having to read the papers, or sit through the committee meeting, yourself.
- 04A newsroom that does not stopGrowing the team enables bigger, broader, better coverage.
The plan is real: we started out by promising three original stories in your inbox every morning. We’ve achieved that for over a year The next step will be even more exciting.
Putney deserves a newsroom. Help build it.
Membership funds the depth behind the journalism, and keeps the civic essentials free for everyone. Sharing this with someone who lives here helps just as much.
- The evidence, documents and analysis behind every investigation
- A monthly briefing from the newsroom
- Invitations to members’ events
- Founding Member status, and your name in our transparency report
- Your £70 price held for life, while your membership renews unbroken
- Everything members get, month to month
- Cancel any time
- Founding status and the lifetime price-lock are annual only
Our accountability findings, safety information, and every councillor’s contact details stay free to read, always. Members pay for the depth; the civic essentials stay open to all of Putney. That is the point of doing it this way.