Why we need you to support us by subscribing to the Gazette - a letter from the Editor

I’ve been a journalist for 38 years, most of them in the Red Rose county, and I’m here to say that my team needs you to urgently subscribe to the Blackpool Gazette by clicking www.blackpoolgazette.co.uk/subscriptions.

Many Fylde coast businesses, just like us, now know what is coming with a new lockdown. And just like in the first lockdown we want to be there to provide you with all the news and information you need - as well as something to take your mind off things. We've been doing it since 1873 and we're not going to stop now!

From just £1 a month initially (£5.99 per month after the first month) you can be here for us too, plus have ad-lite, access to our website with all sorts of exclusive content, including a fantastic puzzles offering and access to the digital edition of the newspaper.

We love the Fylde coast and the people who live here, so we will be launching a big effort to support businesses across the area in the coming days.

It’s where we live, it’s where we work, it's where many of us went to school (I went to Northfold Primary School in Cleveleys and then Fleetwood Grammar School - hello to those who remember me as Gillian Gray!) and we do not want to see more damage to the local economy.

But as many places where we sell the newspaper close, advertising revenues plummet to nothing, and as many of you go online, we need you to subscribe to blackpoolgazette.co.uk to keep US going as well.

It would be great if we could do this for free, but the brutally honest fact is we cannot.

Local news takes money to produce and we cannot pay our trained journalists to find, develop and check stories without having a revenue stream. We do understand there is always the option of free one-size fits all news generated from London and even some local, unsubstantiated sources available via social media and your own feeds. And we understand you might not like everything you read. Indeed, if you believe what some people tell you, all journalists are evil. But we are not. We are just like you and we are desperately trying to do a good job on your behalf.

Our legally and ethically-trained reporters sit through long and involved court cases for days so they can tell you in one sentence what has happened. They will wade through hundreds of pages of council documents to find out how your money is being spent and they will challenge authority - however unpopular that makes us.

We will share nostalgia from our extensive and exclusive archives and tell you what is going on behind the scenes and on the pitch at Blackpool Football Club.

And most of all we will listen to what you say. Every evening I write a newsletter to our subscribers and those of you who have registered on our site. It is one of the great pleasures of my job to answer every email you send me either agreeing or disagreeing with my views.

Of course we will try to be first with stories but not at the expense of it being inaccurate. We would rather be second and more thorough - than wrong. And if we ever get anything not quite right (we are human after all) we will clarify and rectify it immediately.

We will share your stories of joy, of sadness and inspiration. We will do our best to give you some good news amidst the doom and gloom of the Covid crisis - and we will celebrate with you when we all feel safe to go out and resume our lives again.

But most of all we will campaign tirelessly for you and for the Fylde coast, because we are one of you. It matters to us what happens here too because we are all part of the Fylde coast community, living in Bispham, Cleveleys, Fleetwood, Lytham, St Annes and of course Blackpool itself.

We want our communities to flourish - and to report on that news too.

So if you can, please subscribe here.

And thank you.

Gillian