No, it’s not trouble at t’mill… but the latest product of upstart publisher Mill Media will be a little late this month.

Next month, in fact, but it’s coming, Mill Media’s head of commercial Daniel Timms says. Having signed up its first 500 founding subscribers – plus some more – for a Leeds edition, settled on a name (The Exchange), and moved into offices in cobbled Dock Street (pictured), it will be “will be kicking off in earnest” on June 1 with two staff writers.

The digital publication is the latest in a series launched in major UK cities in the last couple of years. Leeds was chosen because there were “loads of stories that we think should be told”, Timms had told the UK’s Press Gazette.

It joins The Mill in Manchester, The Bell in Glasgow, the eponymous The Londoner, The Tribune in Sheffield, The Post in Liverpool and The Dispatch. Some of these titles may have a familiar ring to those who remember the Liverpool Daily Post (a spin-off from Michael Whitty’s campaigning Daily Post that survived a 1904 merger with the Mercury, but closed in 2012) and the Birmingham Despatch (launched 1902 but merged into the current Evening Mail in 1967) …but let’s not be churlish.

The Leeds masthead is “a nod to the many exchanges around West Yorkshire, including Leeds’ Corn Exchange and Bradford’s Wool Exchange. The city is also notably the headquarters of UK regional publisher NationalWorld (formerly Johnston Press).

Timms promises “more long-form pieces, more investigations, that kind of thing”, and says he hopes their style “will add something to the mix”. He reported Mill was growing in all its six cities, with currently more than 13,000 paying subscribers across them. Some are profitable, some are “roughly breaking even”, he told Press Gazette.

Pledges for The Exchange are still invited, but not apparently essential at the start, with a 20 per cent discount offered for the first year at GBP7.16 /month (about A$13.45), with readers invited to get to know the site before it moves behind a paywall.

• Two more journalists with a mission to “dig deeper” in Yorkshire have launched the Whitby Anchor in the historic town, famed for its ruined abbey, Bram Stoker’s inspiration for ‘Dracula’, and as Captain James Cook’s home.

Emma Ryan (above right) and photographer Ceri Oakes (left) worked for the local Gazette ahead of careers with national and regional titles.

Ryan and Oakes – who also writes for the Yorkshire Post – talk of “traditional standards” in journalism and issues that are not being researched or written about, a formula already proving popular on the Anchor’s Facebook and Instagram pages.

Peter Coleman