The battle for readers in London has hotted up again as pioneering local publisher Mill Media launches its latest title.

The Londoner is the latest addition to the stable of title that already includes the Manchester Mill, Sheffield Tribune, Liverpool Post, Birmingham Dispatch, and Glasgow’s The Bell.

It joins Jim Waterson’s recent startup London Centric, Reach portal MyLondon and National World’s London World among the city-wide newsbrands competing for online readers.

London’s former daily newspaper the Standard, owned by Evgeny Lebedev, went weekly last month under the new name, the London Standard, but its website remains a 24/7 news operation.

The Londoner, which like The Bell has launched on a dedicated platform built through Ghost rather than Substack, will initially be free to air but will eventually be moving behind a paywall.

It will be staffed by three former national newspaper journalists – Hannah Williams, who has written for the New Yorker and the Guardian, Miles Ellingham, who used to work for the Financial Times, and Andrew Kersley, wwho has worked for Press Gazette as well as the Observer and the Sunday Times.

For now the team is led by Mill Media founder Joshi Hermann, who has previously worked for the Standard, pending the appointment of a full-time editor.

In an introductory editorial, the site set out an ambition to deliver quality journalism that is “compelling, revelatory and fun.”

It read: “While we’ll cover a dizzying array of topics commensurate with the sheer breadth of London, the red thread running through our stories will be the stuff that tends to get skimpy coverage elsewhere.

“Instead of a play review, we’ll detail the clash of personalities behind that theatre that keeps pulling shows; instead of an exhaustive blow-by-blow recounting of the day at Westminster, we’ll delve into a single line in a council report which is set to change what time you get kicked out of the bars in Soho.

“Our stories will take you to the best parties and tell you which landlords to avoid. The Londoner is here to deliver a form of journalism that is compelling, revelatory and, above all, fun.

“We hope The Londoner can provide stories that will help people living here to feel more connected to the thousands of London-based realities that the reader may not encounter in their daily lives.

“Trying to make sense of a city of 9 million people and 600-odd square miles is no small task. The question which animates us is: what is this city really like today?

“The Londoner is an attempt to get to the bottom of that. We hope you’ll join us as we do our best to answer it. “