Richmond Nub News
Richmond Nub News is a hyperlocal online news website for Richmond upon Thames in south-west London, England, published at richmond.nub.news as part of the Nub News network. It publishes local news, community stories and what's-on information for Richmond, a town on the River Thames within the London Borough of Richmond upon Thames. The site is digital-only and free to read, and it was being edited by Sam Petherick by the end of 2020, publishing stories about Richmond Park, the riverside and the town's community life before he left in 2021 to join the Metro newspaper.
Overview
Richmond Nub News is one town's edition of Nub News, an independent, digital-only hyperlocal publisher with websites covering towns across England and Wales. Each Nub News site is built around a single town rather than a county or a region: its front page carries that town's name, its stories are about that town's streets, schools, council, businesses and people, and its what's-on section lists that town's events. Richmond's edition covers the town of Richmond itself, within a borough that also contains Twickenham, Teddington, Kew, Barnes, East Sheen, Mortlake and Hampton, several of which have their own Nub News sister sites, including Teddington Nub News and Twickenham Nub News.
The site's stated content, in the description given for it, is local news, community stories and what's on for Richmond. In practice a hyperlocal title of this kind publishes council and planning news, police and court stories, school news, business openings and closures, charity and community campaigns, obituaries and tributes, and previews and reviews of local events, together with practical information about roadworks, transport and services. It is supported by advertising from local businesses and by sponsors for its regular features: its what's-on round-ups have credited sponsors including local restaurants, pubs and the Orange Tree Theatre, with the site noting that without its sponsors its Richmond online newspaper would not be possible.
The Town It Serves
Richmond is a town in south-west London on the River Thames. It gives its name to the London Borough of Richmond upon Thames, an outer London borough formed in 1965 from the former municipal boroughs of Richmond and Barnes, south of the river in Surrey, and Twickenham, on the northern, Middlesex bank — making it the only London borough to straddle the Thames. The borough's population is 198,019, and its major communities are Barnes, East Sheen, Mortlake, Kew, Richmond, Twickenham, Teddington and Hampton. Richmond town itself is the borough's best-known centre, a prosperous shopping and residential town built around its green, its high street and its riverside, with Richmond station providing District line, London Overground and South Western Railway services into central London.
The borough contains Richmond Park, the largest park in London, with its free-roaming deer, as well as Kew Gardens, Hampton Court Palace and Twickenham Stadium, and it was ranked first in Rightmove's Happy at Home index in 2023, described as the happiest place to live in Great Britain and the first London borough to take the top place. For a local news title, that setting produces a particular agenda: the management and protection of the parks and the river, planning and housing in a high-value property market, the town centre's shops and restaurants, schools, and the events — from theatre at the Orange Tree and Richmond Theatre to rowing, cycling and running events on the towpath and in the park — that draw visitors into the town. Richmond Park itself is a constant source of stories, from its deer and ecology to the volunteer ranger service that educates and informs its visitors.
Origins Within the Nub News Network
Nub News was officially launched in September 2018 by its founder and chief executive Karl Hancock, a former City banker who had spent about 26 years in the City, working at institutions including Citigroup, Goldman Sachs and Berenberg. He founded the company with Dean Waghorn, who became its chief technology officer. Nub News began as a local news aggregation service, and its first hyperlocal websites of its own — serving Honiton, Exmouth and Sidmouth in Devon — went live in January 2019. Hancock has said he created the company because of the vacuum left by the closure, consolidation and regionalisation of local newspapers, and that its aim is to replicate what newspapers were 25 years ago: a proper town-centred approach to local news, online rather than in print.
The network grew rapidly. By December 2019 it ran 26 hyperlocal brands and had a team of regional editors across the country; by January 2021 it ran 61 titles. Its model allowed readers to contribute directly: every site had a 'Nub It' button through which contributors could upload an article, which was then checked and edited by a journalist before publication. Nub News said it would not launch in a town already sufficiently covered by local media, and it focused on towns where larger publishers had withdrawn or regionalised their coverage. Richmond, where the historic local newspaper provision had been absorbed into wider south-west London titles, fitted that pattern of a distinct town with a strong identity inside a much larger metropolitan news market.
The Richmond Site and Its First Editor
Richmond Nub News was established by the end of 2020. Its editor, Sam Petherick, introduced himself to readers in a piece published on 21 December 2020, describing his background in journalism, including having been a finalist in the scoop of the year category at the British Journalism Awards in 2017, when he sat with the Channel 4 News team, for a story about pay in higher education. His Richmond reporting from that period shows the range of a hyperlocal title: in November 2020 he reported the dispute over Richmond's first protected cycle lane, on Kew Road, which had been unveiled in late September as an experimental scheme; in December 2020 he wrote about a family's elaborately decorated Christmas house and its charity collection, about an expansion of the Volunteer Rangers programme in Richmond and Bushy Parks, and an interview with a guitarist from The Shadows about the band's 60 years and his love of Richmond.
In January 2021 Petherick also took on responsibility for the newly launched Twickenham Nub News, in addition to Richmond, when Nub News expanded further in south-west London. He did not stay long in the dual role: in May 2021 he left Nub News to join the Metro newspaper as a news reporter, having been regional editor for Twickenham Nub News and Richmond Nub News. That movement — an experienced journalist recruited to launch and run town sites, then moving to a national title — is characteristic of the network's early staffing, in which individual editors were the public face of their town titles and wrote much of their content themselves. Richmond Nub News continued after his departure and remained one of the network's listed titles in the publisher's later regulatory statements.
News Coverage
Richmond Nub News's news coverage is defined by its borough and its town. Richmond upon Thames Council's decisions — on planning, parking, cycling and transport, parks, housing and town centre services — form a core subject, and transport schemes in particular generate strong local reaction, as the Kew Road cycle lane dispute showed: residents, the council's transport leadership, Kew Gardens visitors and local businesses all had interests in a single stretch of road. Parking petitions, controlled parking zones and road changes remain regular stories for the site. Police, court and inquest reporting, school admissions and achievements, and health and community services add the standard material of a local news list.
The River Thames and Richmond Park give the site two subjects that few London titles share. The river brings stories about rowing, flooding, towpath works, bridges and riverside development; the park brings stories about its deer, its protected views, its cycling and traffic rules, its volunteers and its ecology. Kew, within the same borough, adds Kew Gardens and its seasonal events, which the site covers as part of the wider Richmond area's life. Because Richmond is an affluent town with an active civic culture, campaigns and petitions — about parking, development, green spaces and services — are a significant part of its news, and a hyperlocal site is often the first place such campaigns are reported and organised around.
What's On and Community Stories
The what's-on section is a central part of the Richmond site. Its regular weekend round-ups gather theatre, markets, repair cafés, festivals and family events across Richmond and neighbouring Twickenham, and readers can add their own events to the site's dedicated what's-on section free of charge. That self-service element is part of the Nub News model: the title acts as a noticeboard as well as a newspaper, listing the small events — school fairs, church concerts, charity runs, local theatre productions — that larger London media do not cover. Sponsorship of the what's-on feature by local businesses ties that service directly to the town's commercial life.
Community stories fill much of the rest of the site: shop and restaurant openings and closures on the high street and in the side streets off Richmond Green, charity fundraising by local families, school and sports club achievements, tributes to well-known residents, and the seasonal stories — Christmas houses and lights, summer fairs, remembrance events — that mark the town's year. Such stories depend on local knowledge and on readers sending information in, which is why the network's contribution tools and its editors' visibility in their towns matter to the model.
The Nub News Model and Regulation
Nub News describes itself in its regulatory statements as an independent, hyperlocal, online news publisher, first launched in September 2018, with websites covering towns across England and Wales. Its head office is in Crewe, where its sales, information technology and finance teams are based, while its journalists generally work remotely and live in the towns they cover — a commitment the company describes as 'boots on the ground' local journalism. Editors are responsible for growing their publications, sourcing unique, original content relevant to local readers and growing their digital audience. The publisher is regulated by IPSO, and its annual statement for 2025 lists Richmond Nub News among its titles, alongside its other London titles including Ealing, Kingston and Teddington.
The network's later shape is smaller than its peak. Its 2025 statement recorded online publications in around 30 towns and cities, 19 members of staff of whom 14 were editorial, and a combined online audience in 2025 of 12.5 million engaged sessions and 36 million page views. James Smith, who became managing director in October 2023 after serving as head of content from June 2022, is the responsible person named in that statement. Press Gazette reported in 2026 that the publisher, which peaked at around 42 towns in 2024, had closed a number of locations and was active in 25 towns, reaching one million monthly unique users, with its journalists typically writing around 25 stories a week and its revenue forecast at £740,000 for the year to September 2026, when it expected to reach its first profit. Richmond's survival through that scaling-down reflects its place as one of the network's established London titles.
Government Advertising Pilot and Public Recognition
Nub News has played a visible part in the national debate about the sustainability of local journalism. Its chief executive gave evidence to the Digital, Culture, Media and Sport Committee's review into the sustainability of local journalism, published in January 2023, which found that larger regional publishers were taking a disproportionate share of available support. In its response, the government said the Cabinet Office was developing a pilot with Nub News to test its value as an advertising channel for central government campaigns, while ruling out removing public notices from printed newspapers. For a small hyperlocal network, that pilot was a significant recognition: it treated digital-only town titles as a legitimate route for public information, alongside the printed press.
How Readers Use the Site
Richmond Nub News is read online, at richmond.nub.news, free of charge. Readers reach it directly, through search and through social media, particularly Facebook, which the founder has credited as an essential tool for building the network's profile in its towns. The site offers its town's news, community stories and what's-on listings in one place, invites readers to upload their own events and contributions, and is supported by local advertisers and sponsors whose backing the site acknowledges publicly. In a borough where many residents commute into central London and where local identity attaches to individual towns rather than to the borough as a whole, a Richmond-named, Richmond-only news site gives the town a distinct voice of its own within London's media.
