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Join more than 25,000 locals who receive a quick, free, daily 7am round-up of Edinburgh's essential news, events and links. Hand-curated by me, a real human, in a 60-seconds-ish summary.

It’s January 2023, more than decade since The Guardian closed its hyperlocal 'experiment' that I worked on… Now Substack feels like the platform for me to refresh some of the formats people loved on Guardian Edinburgh, which I ran 2010-2011. So now I’m launching The Edinburgh Minute newsletter. More on that in a min… First, WHY?

Local news is more fractured than ever

But local folks’ need to know hasn’t gone away. Edinburgh has so many useful news sources. It’s just hard to keep up. Some outlets are professional and prolific. Others are run as hobbies or done anonymously and the stuff of local legend (New Town Flaneur, I’m looking at you and your red trews). But staying across everything is tough, especially with certain problematic social media platforms making life harder. I’m not sure that billionaires or artificial intelligence should decide how much local news you get to see. And so much good local journalism is buried by annoying adverts and clickbait. So I get up at 5am every day to curate everything for you.

Here are four reasons why I’ve re-started this:

1. People still send me stuff

It only lasted one year but people tell me they really appreciated that blog back in 2010/11. Sadly most of the videos, audio stories and photos were lost when the Guardian did some digital spring cleaning. The text is all still there. Nearly a thousand posts by myself and a cast of wonderful contributors. That’s what made it great: the community. We all had reasons to come together in one place, to share and learn about Edinburgh. I made some of my best friends through it. And they still send me things in case I can find a home or audience for them. Some readers wanted to keep the blog alive via a Crowdfunder when it closed in 2011. But the tech, the timing and my confidence were not in a good place. More than a decade on now in 2023, I’ve got a lot more experience under my belt and Substack is here, so I’m giving it a bash. And you can help.

Photo by Adli Wahid on Unsplash

2. Why Substack?

I recently heard a podcast about how local and hyperlocal news was growing on this platform. It convinced me that Substack has all the technology that our Guardian Edinburgh blog had, and more. While I don’t plan to break much news here (those days are behind me and others do it better), I would like to invite anyone who has something to share to help me curate the city’s most interesting links. I’ll start things off, but in the long run I’d love us to become a network of curators and contributors. That’s where Substack’s tools become really powerful. More on that to follow. We’ll keep it simple for now with…

3. The Edinburgh Minute ⏰

Kicking things off is a daily links post landing in your inbox at 7am. Every morning, for free. I’ve been curating these in stealth mode for a month or so, to get a feel for the format again. The posts you receive across the week will be based on sources I find useful and that others sent me. The Edinburgh Minute will have other strands/threads/series, but at launch today and for the coming weeks you’ll receive a single daily short format newsletter. Paying subscribers get an additional weekend guide and the weekly Culture Minute newsletter - Edinburgh’s comprehensive round-up of all things creative.

4. Why Edinburgh?

In short, Edinburgh is brilliant. It’s not perfect (aye it is, naw it’s no), but there are many smart people doing cool, interesting and wonderful things here. So a short daily curated list of links to those things is my first commitment: to give your day an informed start.

Thanks for reading and please share this newsletter with your friends.

Michael MacLeod
Founder and constant curator, January 2023

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