Why Local News Sponsorships Are More Relevant than Ever

Why Local News Sponsorships Are More Relevant than Ever

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Taken together, current events have resulted in a heightened opportunity for brand sponsorships of local news organizations and broadcasts. Let’s examine why these sponsorships are receiving increased attention from advertisers, and the various forms the sponsorships can take.

Mike Ragsdale Says Putting Community First Makes His ‘Indie’ 30A Site a Big Winner

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In this Q&A, 30A founder Mike Ragsdale itemizes what he thinks his industry is doing wrong and how 30A, by making community paramount, has become the top revenue-producing site among independents.

LMA in Big Push to Strengthen Local Journalism and Build Better Communities

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The Local Media Association is working to build a Business Model Accelerator that will chart sustainable revenue paths for local media and, in turn, enhance the vital role that they must play in their communities. In this Q&A, LMA Chief Innovation Officer Jed Williams sketches out this far-ranging quest to give local news a central place in community and ensure the industry will be around for the long run.

It’s a Whole New Tune for the News Media in Music City

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In this Q & A, Kelly Gilfillan, who co-founded Home Page Media, talks about the significance of her company’s purchase by FWP and her role in the new concern, which has disrupted the publishing landscape in Music City.

From Employee to Publisher: How One Media Veteran Did It

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In this Q&A, media veteran Shereen Siewert talks about the biggest move in her career—an exciting but risky gamble in which she would give up the security of a weekly paycheck to strike out on her own as an entrepreneurial, independent publisher.

Why Local News Sponsorships Are More Relevant than Ever

LION Loses Director DeRienzo to Hearst, but ‘Indie’ Summit Doesn’t Miss a Beat

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To find out what the Summit of Local Independent Online News Publishers accomplished, I went to longtime journalist Steve Beatty, who was editor and CEO of the award-winning, investigative website The Lens in New Orleans for eight years before joining LION as a consultant last January and who, with DeRienzo’s departure, has been named interim director.

Street Fight Daily: Square CFO to Lead Nextdoor, Breaking Down the Voice Ecosystem

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TODAY IN LOCAL & DIGITAL MARKETING AND MEDIA… Not All Voice Assistants are Created Equal… Square CFO Sarah Friar to Become Nextdoor CEO… Why Facebook Is Putting Its Skin in Local News’ Subscription Efforts…

Why Facebook Is Putting Its Skin in Local News’ Subscription Efforts

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In this Q&A, Facebook’s Josh Mabry, who leads the Facebook Local News Partnerships team, talks about the mentoring, coaching, and other work in these off-platform initiatives and why Facebook is backing them up with millions of dollars in funding.

Success of Digital Subscriptions Depends on Reader-Focused Newsrooms, Expert Says

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“News organizations need to be laser-focused on creating distinctive, unique, valuable content for their readers. And that means they may have to stop doing some things they are doing today,” said reader revenue expert Matt Skibinski.

How Giant GateHouse Media Performed in Harsh Duke Study of Local News Sites

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I went to Bill Church, senior vice president of news at GateHouse Media—the biggest publisher of newspapers in the U.S.—with questions about the quality of GateHouse sites that were put under the microscope in a 100-community study from Duke University that painted a critical picture of news deserts across the country.

A Probing Look at Local News Comes to Some Disturbing Conclusions

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To accurately gauge the quality of digital local news and assess its impact on communities, you would have to do what no one has wanted, or dared, to do. You would have to look at enough websites, enough stories and videos, in enough communities until you were glassy-eyed. Researchers behind a new study did just that.

Why This Select List of Local News Providers Includes Only One Daily Newspaper

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A year-long study of newsrooms in the U.S. and Europe by two Danish journalists has singled out 16 local providers in the U.S. who are meeting the researchers’ main criterion: structural changes “to forge closer ties and stronger relations to their communities and audiences”—with a special focus on journalism over commerce, technology, and business models.

Local News Pioneer Mike Orren on Industry’s Future: A Steep but Climbable Hill

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“There are no silver bullets,” Mike Orren tells Tom Grubisich. Local news “has always been a complex industry, and advertising, marketing services, managing the print demand—all are going to continue to be a part of the equation.”

Street Fight Daily: Facebook Adds Services to Marketplace, Sketchy Google Knowledge Panel Practices

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A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal publishing, marketing, commerce, and technology… Facebook Marketplace Launches New Services Feature in Partnership with On-Demand Startups… A Fifth of Amazon Merchants Sell More Than $1 Million a Year, Double Last Year’s Share… How the Washington Post Is Building Its Tech Platform, Arc…

Three Candles to Light in Dark Times for Local News and Journalists

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The news about local news hasn’t been good lately. But there have been three recent positive signals helping to balance the scales in the form of a digital newsgathering tool, a new survey about trust, and the survival of an important hyperlocal network in Brooklyn.

Nucleus Marketing’s Mission for 2018: Make Media Buyers Believe in News

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CEO Seth Rogin spoke with Street Fight about how the company combats fraud in web advertising, brings personalization to marketing and tries to convert young media buyers into buying space on premium news sites.

As the Local News Industry Struggles, Publishers Ask Readers to Pay

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The local news industry, fighting for survival, is turning its readers into customers. Sites are either charging readers for premium content — after up to 10 free visits a month — or setting up “membership” programs where readers make voluntary monthly or yearly payments.

Hyperlocal Pioneer Howard Owens Sees New Mobile App as Key to Scaling Beyond His ‘Batavian’

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Eight and a half years after launching his hyperlocal news site The Batavian, in upstate New York, Howard Owens is looking at growing his base company, Album Corp., beyond Batavia to multiple locations. His plan for expansion is driven by a homemade mobile app that he’s experimenting with for the site.

Time to Take a Deep Breath — Local News Isn’t Becoming ‘Extinct’

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The editors in charge of the slimmed-down newsrooms of local pure-plays know how to leverage technology, data and other information to produce coverage that, in some cases, is superior to what was produced in the so-called “golden” age of print.

Can the New Scroll Subscription Service Help Embattled Local Publishers?

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Tony Haile, until recently the longtime CEO of the highly regarded online-analytics site Chartbeat, is planning to launch a new subscription site that doesn’t try to convert readers from free to paid. He calls it Scroll, and it has $3 million in seed money from formidable publishers including the New York Times, News Corp and Axel Springer.