Wilmslow Nub News
Wilmslow Nub News is a hyperlocal online news publication serving Wilmslow and Alderley Edge in Cheshire, England. Published at wilmslow.nub.news, it is one of the newer titles in Nub News, the independent digital-only network of town-based news websites founded in 2018. The company's annual statement to the Independent Press Standards Organisation records that Nub News launched three new titles in 2024: Nantwich Nub News, Wilmslow and Alderley Edge Nub News and Chester Nub News. The site publishes local news and community stories for Wilmslow, an affluent commuter town south of Manchester, together with the neighbouring village of Alderley Edge, as its directory listing describes. It operates to the network's established model of original reporting by journalists who live in the towns they cover, free access for readers, community contributions checked by a journalist before publication, and funding from local sponsorship and advertising. Nub News journalists work to the Editors' Code of Practice under the company's IPSO membership.
A 2024 launch in Cheshire
Wilmslow's arrival marked a return to expansion for Nub News in its home county of Cheshire, where the company's head office is based in Crewe. The network had built a substantial Cheshire presence, with titles in Crewe itself, Macclesfield, Congleton, Alsager, Sandbach and Nantwich, before adding Chester and the Wilmslow and Alderley Edge title in 2024. The launch came during a period in which the company was describing a more selective approach to new towns, having learned from earlier expansion that a title's success depended on choosing the right town and the right journalist, and that its future model would be one town per journalist, with that journalist living in the town. The Wilmslow title's social media presence presents it in the standard network format, describing the service as your town in your pocket and inviting readers to post their news and events through the site's submission button. Its full launch name, Wilmslow and Alderley Edge Nub News, reflects the paired coverage of two neighbouring communities that share a railway corridor, a council area and much of their daily life.
The Nub News network
Nub News was founded by Karl Hancock, a former City of London banker, together with Dean Waghorn, who became chief technology officer. The company officially launched in September 2018, initially as a local news aggregation service, and its first hyperlocal websites, serving Honiton, Exmouth and Sidmouth in Devon, went live in January 2019. Aggregation was phased out and the network moved to publishing original reporting only, with all content free to access. Hancock created the business in response to the closure, consolidation and regionalisation of traditional local newspapers, which had left many towns without dedicated coverage. The network unveiled ten editors running 26 hyperlocal brands in December 2019, announced its 50th site in October 2020 and covered 68 towns by 2021, when former Nottingham Post editor Mike Sassi became editorial director. The head office is in Crewe, where the sales, information technology and finance teams are based and where Cheshire-based journalists regularly meet. In the mid-2020s the company scaled back to fewer, sustainable towns, reporting around one million monthly unique users and forecasting its first profit in 2026.
Editorial approach and standards
Wilmslow Nub News operates under the standards set out in the company's annual IPSO statement. Nub News describes itself as an independent, hyperlocal, online news publisher whose journalists generally work remotely and live in the towns they cover, showing a commitment to boots-on-the-ground local journalism. Editors are responsible for the growth of their publications, sourcing unique, original content relevant to local readers and growing their digital audience. The company's journalists adhere to the Editors' Code of Practice, with accuracy and balance emphasised, facts checked before publication, and errors investigated and corrected when raised. Every Nub News site offers readers the network's submission system, through which stories, photographs and event listings can be uploaded directly and are then checked and edited by a journalist before going live. The head office team supporting the Wilmslow title includes the managing director, James Smith, who joined as head of content in June 2022 and became managing director in October 2023, and who acts as the company's liaison with IPSO.
Coverage of Wilmslow and Alderley Edge
The site's remit is local news and community stories for Wilmslow and Alderley Edge, covering Cheshire East Council matters, planning, transport, policing, schools, business, sport and community events across the two communities. The paired patch shares characteristic concerns: the A34 corridor between Wilmslow and Alderley Edge, where Cheshire Police have run repeated deployments in response to residents' concerns about dangerous driving and car meets, illustrates the kind of neighbourhood issue that features in local reporting for the area. Planning and development are perennial themes in a high-demand housing area within Manchester's commuter belt, while the two centres' independent shops, restaurants and community organisations supply the what's on and business coverage that Nub News titles carry as standard features, including free event listings for local organisers. The title sits within a Cheshire cluster of Nub News sites, so Wilmslow stories are produced alongside coverage from Macclesfield, Congleton, Crewe and Chester, sharing knowledge of county institutions such as Cheshire East Council and Cheshire Constabulary.
The towns it serves
Wilmslow is a town and civil parish in Cheshire East, Cheshire, lying south of Manchester between Alderley Edge and Handforth. The wards of Wilmslow North and Wilmslow South had a combined population of 25,498 at the 2001 census, and the town figure of 30,326 was recorded for the same year. Wilmslow forms part of the Cheshire Golden Triangle, an area of affluent small towns and villages generally considered to comprise Wilmslow, Alderley Edge and Prestbury, and noted for expensive housing and for attracting professional footballers and television personalities. Alderley Edge, immediately to the south, grew from a small settlement after the arrival of the railway in 1842, when the Manchester and Birmingham Railway offered free 20-year season tickets to Manchester businessmen who built homes worth more than fifty pounds within a mile of the station; its population rose from 561 in 1841 to 2,856 by 1902. The district that became Alderley Edge was renamed from Chorley in 1894. Both communities are administered by Cheshire East Council, created in 2009, and retain strong rail links to Manchester and Crewe that underpin their commuter character.
Place in Cheshire local media
Wilmslow was historically served by Cheshire weekly newspapers, including the Wilmslow Express, part of the Macclesfield Express family of titles published by Reach plc, whose consolidation of newsrooms reduced dedicated town coverage across the county. Nub News's Cheshire strategy placed digital-only titles in individual towns, staffed by journalists living locally, rather than treating them as districts of a county paper. The Wilmslow and Alderley Edge launch in 2024 extended that approach into the Golden Triangle, an area whose affluence and concentration of local businesses suit the network's sponsorship-based model, in which local advertisers rather than programmatic advertising fund the journalism. The title joined an established county network at a moment when the company was publicly shifting from expansion for its own sake to sustainable growth in fewer locations. Its inclusion in the company's annual IPSO statement list of current sites, alongside the other 2024 launches, confirms its status as one of the network's active publications, published from the Crewe head office operation a short distance from the patch it covers.
Business model
Wilmslow Nub News is funded through the Nub News model of sponsorship, client campaigns and job advertisements, supplemented by premium-tier advertising. Businesses can appear free of charge in the sites' round-up lifestyle pages dedicated to events and shopping, including What's On and Shop Local features, and can pay premium prices for priority placement or social media promotion. The company has said it does not rely on Google advertising revenue and aims for non-intrusive sponsorship, arguing that local businesses had left local paper advertising because the papers themselves had weakened, and could be won back by good-quality local journalism. Nearly two million pounds was raised from investors at the network's launch. After peaking at a larger footprint, Nub News reduced the number of towns it covered, adapted its sales team to look after incoming enquiries, and reported expected revenue of £740,000 in the year to September 2026, up 30 per cent year on year, with a first profit of £7,500 forecast. A Wilmslow title launched in 2024 was therefore created under the company's sustainability-first rules, including the principle that each town's journalist should live in that town.
Audience and continuing role
Nub News reported in its annual IPSO statement a total online audience of around three million page views per month across its combined sites, with 21 members of staff, 15 of them editorial, at that time; later reporting described around one million monthly unique users across its active towns and a team of 25 full-time staff. Wilmslow Nub News reaches its readers through its website, social media accounts, the overall Nub News app and weekly newsletters, which the company operates across its towns. For Wilmslow and Alderley Edge, the title provides a dedicated digital news service for two communities whose stories might otherwise appear only as items within Macclesfield or Greater Manchester coverage. It continues to publish at wilmslow.nub.news, providing local news and community stories for Wilmslow and Alderley Edge as one of the network's 2024 generation of Cheshire titles.
