An honest letter from the Editor: We need you - please subscribe to wigantoday.net

I’ve been a journalist for (whisper it quietly) more than 40 years, most of them in Wigan.

Today I have a brutally honest message for you. We need your help. There are no magic beans to keep us going and we need you to urgently subscribe to the WiganToday website by clicking here.

Many Wigan businesses, just like us, now know what is coming with a new lockdown. And just like in the first lockdown we want to be there to provide you with all the news and information you need - as well as something to take your mind off things. We’ve been doing it for 167 years and we’re not going to stop now!

From just £1 a month for the first month (£5.99 per month after that) you can be here for us too, plus have ad-lite access to our website with all sorts of exclusive content, including a fantastic puzzles offering.

We love this fabulous town and the people who live here, so we will be launching a big effort to support businesses across the area in the coming days.

It’s where we live, it’s where we work, it’s where many of us went to school (I went to Highfield St Matthew's and The Deanery High - hello to those who remember me as Janet Benn) and we do not want to see more damage to the local economy.

But as many places where we sell the newspaper close, advertising revenues plummet to nothing, and as many of you go online, we need you to subscribe to keep US going as well.

It would be great if we could do this for free, but the brutally honest fact is we cannot.

Local news takes money to produce. We have to pay the salaries of our staff who live here and raise their families here. We do understand there is always the option of free national ‘one size fits all’ news generated from London and even some free local, unsubstantiated, bits and pieces available via social media and your own feeds.

We get that. We understand you might not like everything you read - who does? And politically-motivated rhetoric tells you journalists are horrible. I can assure you we are not. We are just like you and we are desperately trying to do a good job on your behalf.

Our legally and ethically trained reporters sit through long and involved court cases for days so they can tell you in one sentence what has happened. They will wade through hundreds of pages of council documents to find out how your money is being spent and they will challenge authority - however unpopular that makes us.

We will share nostalgia from our extensive and exclusive archives and tell you what is going on behind the scenes and on the pitch at Wigan Athletic and Wigan Warriors.

Of course we will try to be first with stories but not at the expense of it being inaccurate. We would rather be second and more thorough - than wrong. And if we ever get anything not quite right (we are human after all) we will clarify and rectify it immediately.

We will share your stories of joy, of sadness and inspiration. We will do our best to give you some good news amidst the doom and gloom of the Covid crisis - and we will celebrate with you when we all feel safe to go out and resume our lives again.

But most of all we will campaign tirelessly for you and for our lovely borough, because we are one of you. More so than ever do we need to stand up and be counted as we tackle the devastating effects of this dreadful virus - and we won't let you down.

We want our communities to flourish - and to report on that news too.

I've never written a letter like this before but these are unprecedented times.

So if you can, please subscribe here.

Thank you and keep safe

Janet

PS: I love to hear from you so if you have a story you would like us to cover or a good news message for us to share please email me: [email protected]