The following is a public service announcement from London Reconnections:
During the pandemic London Reconnections basically ran on a skeleton staff basis. But we have slowly rebuilt our capacity to produce long form content on a biweekly basis, ably assisted by some new volunteers, such as Heliomass (Dan) and some others behind the scenes.
We Are Working to Expand our Coverage
Nonetheless, we would like to expand our offering, but are spread too thin at the moment to do so. We are looking for help to allow us to produce more content, find additional interesting transport stories, and cover more transport subjects. Furthermore, we have dozens of articles in various stages of completion, but need time to finish them.
Do you know of other cities, regions, or countries with interesting transport development(s)? In particular, we would like to have correspondents to keep an eye on developments in, but not limited to:
- Manchester & Liverpool
- Birmingham
- Other cities and regions in The North
- Edinburgh, Glasgow, and Scotland in general
- Dublin
- Wales
- Benelux
- Germany/Austria
- Switzerland
- Scandinavia
- India
- Australia & New Zealand, and
- the Far East.
Ex-pat and local correspondents are especially welcome.
Professional or Enthusiast Transport Skills and Experience
Regarding other transport aspects:
- Do you follow UK or technological bus news & developments closely?
- Do you follow UK or technological tram, and/or tram-train, news & developments closely?
- Do you have railway, transport industry, or transport planning and/or urban development expertise that you’d like to share.
- If you do not wish to write or share anything publicly, you could also help behind the scenes. We have a group of transport experts that review our articles for accuracy, suggest other aspects to consider, as well as discuss current and potential future transport schemes and proposals.
- Other topics of interest include the transport and urban effects or urban cycling, micro-mobility (e-scooters, e-bikes, etc.), urban ferries, river logistics, & canal transport. We need someone to keep an eye on such developments and how they can or are shaping urban transport.
If the answer is Yes to any of these, would you like to write about it? Articles need not be long – our own are long because we just get carried away and there’s no-one to stop us.
Alternatively, are you looking for another outlet for your existing transport writing? We’ll even accept previously published articles. Either way, we can provide a wider readership, with almost half a million readers a year.
Note that as usual, we are not interested in crayonista schemes, What-If scenarios, unofficial proposals for lines, stations etc.
Why not Consider Writing for us?
Is there a transport-related topic mode, or historical aspect, you think London Reconnections could feature that we haven’t covered? Would you be interested in writing about it? (we can help with editing). An online alias can be provided upon request.
We let our writers write about whatever interests them, as long as it interests us as well. We also endeavour to keep each writer’s individual voice within the Reconnections house style. Send us a proposal, with the focus on a different or deeper take on a topic. If we’re interested we’ll work with you on formatting etc..
Free Content Costs Money
We continue to be a free content site. However, we do have a Patreon for donations, which goes solely to paying for the not inconsiderable server costs – given how many reads and views the site gets annually.
We are also looking into migrating to a new host website platform which for easier and better control of the look and feel of the site, and to streamline loading of articles and images on your screens. Furthermore, the current WordPress site user interface is increasingly complicated, and requires a dedicated person to make changes.
Other Ways to Help
If you would like to help out behind the scenes, particularly with:
- Social media coordinator
- Flow editing (although we are good for proofreaders)
- News reviewing and simple formatting
do get in touch, as these are much needed roles to free us up to focus on research and writing. It can be just a few minutes a week, or as news comes up – whatever time and information you can provide.
Apply to Join
Do send along proposals, or to apply to join the LR team, to Mike at LondonReconnections dot com.