Frome Nub News
Frome Nub News is a hyperlocal online news publication serving Frome in Somerset, England. Published at frome.nub.news, it is part of Nub News, the independent digital-only network of town-based news websites launched in 2018. The site publishes local news, community stories and events coverage for Frome, a historic market town at the eastern end of the Mendip Hills. Frome was among the Somerset towns brought into the network in its first year of operation, when Nub News appointed an experienced regional editor to run a group of sites across the county's towns. The title follows the network's established model: original reporting by journalists rooted in the area, free access for readers, a submission system through which residents can contribute stories and events for checking by a journalist, and funding from local sponsorship and advertising. Nub News is a member of the Independent Press Standards Organisation, and its journalists work to the Editors' Code of Practice, with accuracy and balance emphasised in the company's published standards.
Arrival in Somerset
Nub News moved into Somerset in the spring of 2019, within months of its first websites going live in Devon. In May 2019 the company appointed Tim Lethaby as its regional editor for the South-West of England, giving him responsibility for the company's news sites covering the Somerset towns of Wells, Frome, Glastonbury, Midsomer Norton, Shepton Mallet, Cheddar, Radstock and Street. Lethaby brought 21 years of industry experience to the role, having worked his way up from trainee reporter to editor at the Mid Somerset Series, which included the Central Somerset Gazette, the Cheddar Valley Gazette, the Wells Journal and the Shepton Mallet Journal, and having also edited the Western Gazette, the Somerset Guardian and the Frome Standard. He had overseen seven Reach plc-owned weeklies from January 2017 before being among the journalists whose jobs were put at risk in a company restructure in November 2018. On joining Nub News he said the company was looking to revolutionise local community news while remaining loyal to its roots, putting news back into the community's hands while reporting on the issues that matter, and filling an important gap left behind by large media groups.
The Nub News network
Nub News was founded by Karl Hancock, a former City of London banker, with Dean Waghorn as co-founder and chief technology officer. Hancock's inspiration came from a pitch by Waghorn, who had initially developed the Nub concept as a hobby project in Bridgwater, presented at a university reunion. The company officially launched in September 2018, at first as a local news aggregation service, and its first hyperlocal websites, serving Honiton, Exmouth and Sidmouth, went live in January 2019. Aggregation was subsequently phased out in favour of original reporting only, and all content is free to access. The network expanded rapidly, unveiling a team of ten editors running 26 hyperlocal brands in December 2019, announcing its 50th site in October 2020 and reaching 68 towns by 2021. Its head office is in Crewe, Cheshire, where the sales, technology and finance teams are based. Former Nottingham Post editor Mike Sassi became editorial director in September 2021. In later years the company consolidated, reducing the number of towns it covered, moving to a model of one town per journalist, and forecasting its first profit in 2026 after refocusing on sustainable growth.
Editorial approach
Frome Nub News works to the network's stated editorial principles. Nub News journalists adhere to the Editors' Code of Practice, and the company describes a strong emphasis on accuracy and balance, with facts checked before publication and errors investigated and corrected as soon as they are raised. Every site carries the network's submission facility, often described by its Nub It branding, through which contributors can upload their own articles and event listings directly; contributed material is checked and edited by a journalist before it goes live. Founder Karl Hancock characterised the ambition as replicating what newspapers were 25 years earlier, a proper town-centric approach to local news delivered online rather than in print, and said the network cared about the people in its towns rather than about clicks. Journalists across the network generally work remotely and live in the towns they cover, a commitment the company describes as boots-on-the-ground local journalism. Regional editors are responsible for growing their publications, sourcing unique original content relevant to local readers and growing their digital audiences.
Coverage of Frome
The site's remit is Frome news, community stories and events, and its coverage spans the concerns of a self-contained Somerset market town: Frome Town Council and Somerset Council decisions, planning and housing, policing, schools, local business, sport, arts and community life. Planning and development are perennial local themes in a town that has grown substantially through planned housing expansion, while the town's strong independent retail, markets and cultural life generate a steady flow of community and what's on material. The Somerset structure under which the title was launched, with a single experienced regional editor overseeing a family of neighbouring town sites, meant Frome stories were produced within a team that also covered Wells, Shepton Mallet and Glastonbury, giving the title access to shared knowledge of county-wide institutions such as the unitary Somerset Council, Avon and Somerset Police and local health services. The site also carries the network's standard features, including free event listings for local organisers and Shop Local and What's On round-ups in which local businesses can appear.
The town it serves
Frome is a town and civil parish in Somerset, at the eastern end of the Mendip Hills on the River Frome, 13 miles south of Bath. At the 2021 census the parish had a population of 28,567 and the built-up area had a population of 27,905. Frome was one of the largest towns in Somerset until the Industrial Revolution. It first grew due to the wool and cloth industry, which was established as the town's principal industry in the fifteenth century, and later diversified into metal-working and printing after the last cloth firm closed in 1965. The town was enlarged during the twentieth century, with population expanding greatly from the 1970s onwards as a result of planning decisions to develop housing and industry, partly to protect the green belts of Bath and Bristol. Frome retains a large number of listed buildings, and most of the town centre falls within a conservation area. It has road and rail transport links and acts as an economic, sporting and cultural centre for the surrounding area, including the annual Frome Festival and Frome Museum. Its settlement history stretches back to a monastery founded by St Aldhelm around 685.
Place in Somerset local media
Frome's newspaper heritage includes the Frome Standard, one of the titles Tim Lethaby edited during his career with the Mid Somerset Series and Reach plc weeklies. The restructure that put dozens of Reach journalists' jobs at risk in late 2018 was part of the wider consolidation of Somerset's weekly press that Nub News set out to answer, recruiting experienced editors made redundant by regional publishers and setting them to work on their old patches in competition with their former titles. HoldtheFrontPage, the journalism trade site, framed Lethaby's appointment in exactly those terms: an axed editor taking on his old titles in a new role. For Frome, the result was a digital-only title dedicated to the town, produced within a Somerset team, at a time when the town's print coverage was being managed from increasingly distant newsrooms. Frome Nub News has remained listed among the network's active titles in the company's regulatory reporting, alongside its sister Somerset sites in Wells, Shepton Mallet and Glastonbury.
Business model
Frome Nub News is funded through the Nub News sponsorship model. The network relies on sponsorship, client campaigns and job advertisements rather than programmatic display advertising, offering advertising space to sponsors who are typically local businesses, and in later years adding premium-tier advertising under which businesses pay for priority placement or social media promotion. The company has said its sites do not rely on Google Ads for revenue and that it aims for sponsorship on its sites to be non-intrusive. The model was underpinned by nearly two million pounds raised from investors at launch. Hancock argued that local businesses had disappeared from local paper advertising because the local paper was no longer good enough, and that good-quality, unique local journalism could bring them back. After scaling back its footprint, the company forecast revenue of £740,000 in the year to September 2026 and its first profit, attributing the turnaround to concentrating on fewer towns, looking after incoming advertising clients, and building its premium partnership offer. Central government also piloted Nub News as an advertising channel following a parliamentary review of local journalism.
Audience and continuing role
Across the network, Nub News has reported audiences of around one million monthly unique users in its active towns, and around three million page views per month across its combined sites in its regulatory reporting, figures that give small-town titles such as Frome a shared scale none could achieve alone. The company employs journalists who live in their towns, and its stated mission is to put the reader's town in their pocket, making hyperlocal news easily accessible on all devices, particularly mobile. Within Somerset, Frome Nub News forms part of a cluster of Mendip-area titles launched under a single regional editor in 2019 and maintained since, covering neighbouring communities that share councils, schools catchments and cultural life. The publication continues to publish at frome.nub.news, providing Frome with local news, community stories and events coverage as a digital-only title in the Nub News network.
