This article appears as part of the Lessons to Learn newsletter.

Hello everyone, and happy new year.

This is my first newsletter of 2025 and, to be honest, I didn’t really know what to write about. It’s January, after all, so there hasn’t been much going on over the last few weeks, and given the weather it still feels like everyone is stuck in deep freeze.

But that also means that this is an opportunity to do something different. Usually I use this newsletter to highlight some stories that have been developing, or to explain something on which we've been reporting.

Today, I'm not doing that. Instead, I want to ask for your help.

This may seem obvious, but it’s worth making clear: a lot of the best stories that you read in The Herald, and everywhere else, only exist because someone involved or affected told a journalist about it. Yes, we get stuff from FOI responses on the one hand, or press releases on the other, but what really matters is having someone tell us not just what is going on but why it matters to them, their family, their community, or the country as a whole.

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