In a growing number of spots, local news isn’t just surviving: it’s thriving. But the picture isn’t so pretty for legacy publishers. Media Voices’ Esther Kezia Thorpe outlines the year’s key events in local news publishing…
“The global decline of local news is one of journalism’s greatest challenges,” Axios’ Nicholas Johnston said. “It’s not going to be solved by a single idea, but by many entrepreneurial visions.”
Johnston was talking about his investment in The Mill, which is expanding across the UK after being valued at £1.75 million. Founder Joshi Herrmann started the Manchester Mill on Substack in 2020, before launching editions in Liverpool and Sheffield. The three titles have attracted more than 5,500 paid subscribers between them, and now have at least two reporters each on staff. With the fresh investment, The Mill’s fourth title, The Birmingham Dispatch, launched on 1st November.
Even legacy publishers aren’t immune from the newsletter craze. A number of regional titles at Reach, the UK’s largest commercial news publisher, have adopted ‘newsletter-led’ strategies.
Jacqui Merrington provided a round-up of some other start-ups to watch. The Edinburgh Minute publishes a daily 60-second long read on what’s going on in the city, and is sustainable through paying subscribers. The Bristol Cable “pioneered an investigative local media co-op in 2014” and is undergoing a new membership drive with the aim of being entirely member funded.
Even paywalls are having a moment. Highland News and Media in Scotland launched a digital paywall in September 2021, and now has over 3,000 paid online subscribers, Publishing Director Steve Barron told Press Gazette. Similarly, The Belfast Telegraph in Northern Ireland has 8,500 paid digital subscribers since launching its own digital paywall in May 2020. While its ‘more neutral’ stance on political reporting has helped, Director of Publishing Edward McCann also credited a conscious decision to invest in its journalism as key to its success.
Advance Local has been experimenting with day passes as a way to build a paying relationship with those unwilling to commit to subscriptions. “Of the 1,826 day pass purchases, 12.3% have subscribed,” Debbie Tolman wrote.
Nearly 300 new digital local news organisations have launched since 2016 in the US alone. A study from Project Oasis noted that “one in five publishers believe their organisation has reached sustainability and another two in five say they are heading in that direction.” The models and methods may vary, and there is no easy money. But enough people are giving it a go for the sector to have found a new energy.
Bumps (and craters) in the road
Nowhere have the harsh realities of the business been highlighted so starkly this year as at Reach. In January, they announced plans to make 200 redundancies because of the “double whammy” of decreasing consumer spend and rising costs. A further 192 editorial jobs were put on the line in March.
But that wasn’t the end of the cuts. In early November, they announced a further round of 450 jobs. The National Union of Journalists called the cuts “the single worst” mass culling in the UK publishing sector for decades.
Bosses have blamed the “online attention recession” and “economic headwinds”. While the market has its challenges, the state of the UX at Reach – and indeed many other legacy local news publications in the UK – renders them both unreadable and unnavigable. The cuts seen this year are a predictable part of the decline we see when pageviews are the north star for local news.
National World also came under fire. They announced a restructuring that placed over 50 journalists at risk of redundancy, as well as a below-inflation 4.5% pay rise, while paying £1.36 million to shareholders. 300 journalists took part in National World’s first company-wide strike in August.
In the US, Gannett has been cutting “substantially deeper” than the rate of newspaper revenue decline. Nieman Lab’s Joshua Benton pointed out: “Some of that decline is Gannett selling a few newspapers to local buyers, but a lot of it is straight-up closures.”
Struggles with legacy publishers are nothing new. But 2023 has seen some of the most promising initiatives stumble. Axios Local, which saw rapid growth in 2022, slowed their planned expansion after launching in their 30th new market in San Diego in July. The decision came after it fell 10% short of its 2022 revenue goals. Instead, Axios Local would focus on growing its existing readership and monetisation capabilities before launching anything further.
The Athletic, under new owners The New York Times, has been quietly cutting back on local podcasts. The publisher has stressed that reporters with cancelled podcasts will continue writing in-depth local coverage. But they have also pulled back from dedicated coverage of many pro teams, with management clear that continued coverage is dependent on reader interest.
Perhaps most difficult for some smaller outlets has been the growing hostility between Meta and publishers. The Meta Journalism Project’s team were laid off at the end of 2022, and the tech giant confirmed in September that it would stop funding the Community News Project when the current contracts end. The project currently places more than 100 reporters in under-served communities around the UK.
Getting to grips with AI
Some organisations have been using AI and automation successfully for some years. We covered five publishers using these technologies in a special report and podcast published earlier this year: Practical AI for Local Media. But the effect of generative AI on the sector remains to be seen.
News Corp Australia is producing 3,000 articles a week using generative AI. A team of four staff on the Data Local unit use the tech to generate the stories on weather, fuel prices and traffic conditions. But Executive Chair Michael Miller was keen to stress that “all such information and decisions are overseen by working journalists from the Data Local team.”
In July, OpenAI, the parent company of ChatGPT, reached a two-year deal with the American Journalism Project to put $5 million towards efforts by local outlets to experiment with AI technology. In addition to the grant funding, there are up to $5 million worth of credits that can be used by AJP’s portfolio companies to access its tech products.
Sustainability in local news is achievable. But even the brightest start-ups have shown that audiences are small, content needs to be highly focused, and margins are thin. “It’s a notoriously shitty business,” Scott Brodbeck, Founder of Local News Now told Press Gazette. “I probably would be a lot wealthier if I just owned a series of Airbnbs or something.”
Media Makers Meet – Mx3 is proud to be the media partner for Media Moments 2023, the report written by Media Voices which analyses the major media events of the past year. The report is free to download and is available here.
