An editor is switching off his online newspaper. But first he takes a quick flick through the pages of its past

THE NEWS TODAY is me: I am finally closing Loving Dalston — to reset my work-life balance after 13 years of scoops and shocks. There are still too many stories in and around Hackney on my to-do list… and that list will only get bigger. A reporter’s dream, but it’s overwhelming.

Take a glance at some of the many stories Loving Dalston has covered. Even an under-funded operation can report great stories, uncover things that as the saying has it “somebody somewhere doesn’t want printed” and in other ways make a difference.

Most of the pieces were by me, some by occasional helpers. Apart from cousin Hamish, they were ad hoc-recruited: I’d happen on someone, perhaps at a press reception, who had a good NE London tale to tell. Journalism students would email me, too: they wanted the experience of working under a trained reporter-editor on their CV.

* Carnival, Hackney stylee In 2010, it was almost a local secret; now the annual bling-and-dance fest, main picture, is hot, hot, hot.

* Industrial-heritage beauty down by the rivers Big money has changed all that.

* Black hero CLR dropped by Hackney council CLR James (1901-1989) was a bestselling West Indian non-fiction writer whose name was, for possibly vote-seeking reasons, bestowed on the small Dalston library. The council later decided to splurge £5 million on a new library, below, and quietly drop the name of the black intellectual admired for his writing on cricket and colonialism.

James’s connection with Hackney was tenuous, but Loving Dalston thought a name’s being on a library for many years makes it part of the Dalston story, and if he were to be written out, the public should be consulted. Loving Dalston pressure won: the name was saved. A small news site can make a difference.

* A fun day in Clapton? Not for disabled people Hackney stages an event in a disabled-unfriendly building.

* Decapitated Queen Elizabeth gets her head back A daub of Dalston iconography saved.

* Fishy business for a new Dalston Lane café My doubts about the set-up — streetfront chicken run shown at to were sadly confirmed when the whole thing collapsed, years later reopening as a caff.

* Spurs star who died a war hero denied a medal Britain at its imperialist worst.

* Cycle racks, the first of many for railway station entrance halls, were installed at Dalston Junction station after a Loving Dalston campaign. Now there is a profusion of racks yet you have to be early to tie up.

* A lumbering campaign by the Rio Cinema for the bus stop to be reset nearer the premises was given a successful boost when this then-young news site offered help. Later, a mishandled strike , above, by a muscle-flexing management led to bitterness and staff cuts. They still do not get the London Living Wage supposedly promoted by Hackney council and London Mayor Sadiq Khan.

* Wee laddies misbehaving A fun story offered the convenience of splashing a lots of puns about. Hackney council provided tem-pee-rary urinals.

* Cop-in-a-box This dangerous-looking attempt to arrest Dalston’s night-time-economy excesses was soon itself arrested.

* Overseas buyers lured to Dalston property Property price rises of more than 600% within two decades make Hackney near-irresistible to moneyed foreigners — and ruinous for local people.

* Rare African artworks lost in Shoreditch Stunning, the beautiful things you see in Hackney.

* Hackney bemoans austerity, pays 5 execs more than the PM Every year Loving Dalston would try, and usually succeed, to find what the council’s top people were being paid, something the public, their paymasters, should know without reporters having to dig.

* A week’s food for two for a fiver from London’s best fruit ’n’ veg market Every week Shooey told you the bargains and how to cook them.

* Footy club Birckbeck Orient recruits Loving Dalston as media partner — and ends season being promoted.

* Thousands of fish die in killer river Scandal uncovered on the Lea.

*Child refugees: Do more to help, Hackney Critics urged the council to try harder.

If you are curious about how Hackney has changed, skim my bloggish intro to the evolving site. You might be surprised to learn, for example, that dining out in Dalston 13 years ago was “not wonderful”, in contrast to nowadays when, despite the disastrous combination of the Covid-19 pandemic shutdown and incompetent governance, finding a good walking-distance restaurant is easy for Hackneyites.

I want to inspire some other resident journo to meet the need for independent reporting in our vibrant NE London. The area is brimming with stories, including from under-represented ethnic minorities that need to be heard. Follow a press code and ask freelance contributors to observe it when they write for you.

Hire a studio to make podcasts, apps, vlogs and the other extras I forsook because photo sales were providing a goodish amount of money to make leisure and holiday times special. You might choose the advertising route, which I quit because too often gambling ads slipped in to Loving Dalston pages.

Oh, and do a business plan to win equity funding to take on marketing, technical and business people.

That’s it, folks: some time soon this site will slip into the ether.

David Altheer 180323

* Apart from supplied strike pic and Hackney council graphic, all photographs © [email protected] and all for sale for reproduction. Bigger format versions usually available.

* Emboldened underscored words in most cases indicate a hyperlink, a reader service rare among websites. If a link does not work, it is probably because the site to which the URL refers has not been maintained.

* Links to articles in The Guardian do not imply any approval of the newspaper’s historic slavery links.