853 covers issues from Greenwich and other parts of South East London. It aims to provide the kind of public interest journalism you can rely on – no clickbait, no ripping stories off Twitter or elsewhere. It began as a personal blog but now has a number of contributors – you can find details of them on this page.

Site editor Darryl Chamberlain has been a journalist for more than 20 years. He started digging into issues in Greenwich after standing in a council election in 2010, and attending a council meeting where a nervous member of the public was harangued by the mayor for not understanding its procedures.

Since then, he has turned 853 into the only media outlet regularly attending Greenwich Council meetings. He has lived in the area all his life, and has also worked at the BBC, MoneySavingExpert.com and the innovation charity Nesta. Funding from readers pays for Darryl to work on 853 part-time, the rest of the time he works as a freelance editor.

You can find out more about him on his website and email him via this website at tell853something[at]gmail.com.

The site is also a member of the Local Democracy Reporting Service, which provides reports from councils across the UK. We use these to supplement our own reporting of Greenwich and to pick up big stories in neighbouring boroughs that might otherwise be missed. It also allows us to use some BBC local news material.

853 also features Community Spotlight pieces by groups looking to publicise their work, and is the home of Mercury Man, a semi-retired local newspaper columnist.