One of Alma’s projects is up for a national media award.
Undertaken on behalf of national politics and culture magazine, The Lead, the initiative has seen Luke Beardsworth and Ed Walker create and deliver highly engaged and high quality email newsletters and local journalism across the North of England.
Known as The Lead North the project, which began in early 2024, is on the shortlist at Press Gazette’s Future of Media Awards in the Best Journalism-Based Newsletters of 2025 (Specialist and Regional).
The rigorous reporting focuses on Blackpool, Lancashire, Southport, Teesside and Calderdale at present and draws upon the pair’s extensive knowledge in engaging local audiences through digital publishing and working with a network of talented journalists and contributors across the five titles.
Luke Beardsworth, said: “Being nominated in the Future of Media Awards is recognition of the fantastic work done by our journalists in Lancashire, Blackpool, Southport, Teesside and Calderdale.
“We firmly believe that there is an audience and a market for long-form, careful and considered reporting across the North and that’s what we’re starting to prove .There are dozens of stories that wouldn’t have been reported on without their hard work.
“We’re always learning, developing what we do and making sure that The Lead North titles are asking the very toughest questions of those elected to represent us.”
The project during the past 18 months has also seen pop-up products in a number of other Northern towns and regions as well as a special edition printed newspaper, packaging up the best of the newsletters and online stories, with a print run of more than 200,000 before last year’s general election.
The Press Gazette Future of Media Awards are announced in September and will see The Lead North up against the likes of the Belfast Telegraph, Financial Times, Democracy For Sale, The Edinburgh Minute and The Will Hayward newsletter in the category.
The shortlisting follows another award nomination for Alma’s work as director Ed Walker’s other venture, Blog Preston, secured two nominations in the Publisher Podcast Awards for its collaborative podcast The Parched Pea Podcast.
Working with National World title The Lancashire Post, independent radio station Central Radio and former BBC local radio presenter John ‘Gilly’ Gillmore the podcast lifts the lid on the lives of Prestonians.
Now in its second series the podcast was shortlisted in the Best Local/Community podcast category and the Best Partner Podcast category up against the likes of Vox, the Financial Times and Reach PLC.
In recent months, Alma’s work with Blog Preston has also seen the independent news title surge into the IPSOS Iris ranking – which tracks which local news titles are most read and most engaged with in the UK – to be ranked in the top 30 most engaged with local news titles based on the time spent engaging with the website.
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