✨Welcome to The Journal ✨

Last year, the editors of WalesOnline sat around and discussed what we could do with Substack here in Wales. Those discussions were broad ranging and challenging and resulted in two things. One was the brilliant Inside Welsh Rugby newsletter. We’re very proud of it. Our correspondents Steffan Thomas and Ben James share fascinating regular insights and analysis about Welsh rugby as well as the best reporting in the business.

The other part of the conversation centred around the big issues facing our nation. We talked about what people wanted to read. We talked about what was missing from the national conversation. We talked about how we could meet those demands. Our decision was to ask our brilliant, passionate, crusading Welsh Affairs Editor Will Hayward to take it on as a personal newsletter and write about the issues closest to his heart. It has been a huge success. Hundreds of you have signed up to pay to read his work. And it has been lauded across the industry, winning the Politics Newsletter of the Year at the Publisher Newsletter Awards.

This success is a deserved reflection of Will’s determination to understand and convey to a wider audience the depth of the difficulties Wales faces. The struggles of our health service, the fury in Welsh Labour and among the wider public at Vaughan Gething’s chaotic handling of his short leadership, and the baffling cul-de-sac it sometimes feels the Welsh Conservatives have stridden into with no desire to escape, have all been astutely dissected in this newsletter. 

But all good things come to an end. Will is moving on and over recent weeks, we’ve been sat around a table asking again those same questions. What do people want to read; which issues need investigation, how can we best do that through Substack? And we’re really excited to share with you what is coming next. We’ve got a plan of thought-provoking, challenging, original pieces which we’re going to be publishing once a week. We’re going to be bringing in different voices to cover a wide range of subjects. As you may already have noticed from the change of graphics, we’re calling this newsletter The Journal. It’s a name that is a core part of our heritage as a news publisher in Wales. One of our titles, the Carmarthen Journal, is the longest-continuously published newspaper in Wales. It’s a name with a distinguished news publishing history that also reflects what we plan to do with this newsletter - provide regular pieces dissecting, examining and digesting the things that matter to all of us in Wales. We hope this newsletter will provide a long future for a name with a proud past.

We understand that we promised you Will Hayward when you signed up to this newsletter. So anyone who paid for an annual subscription will receive a refund and this newsletter will become free. But stay with us to find out what’s next. It’ll be worth it.

Catch up soon

The Wales Online Team