why does local media matter and how should we pay for it?
avoiding false equivalency between different revenue and content strategies
A few weeks ago, I attended a conference in New York City for newsletter operators. Most of the attendees had large media operations and corporate teams. I showed up because I could take the train up to New York for the day, which sounded fun, and I thought I might learn something from the "big guns."
It was meh. There were a few notable takeaways, although not much I hadn't already learned from podcasts. The room welcomed a lot of bro-y bros, which is always a good time. 🙄 We heard a lot of discussion about collecting and mining personal data for profit, which made me cringe (though I know it's reality).
Never forget that when media products are free by design, you are the product.
One panel discussion called "Making Local News Profitable" stuck with me. The panel included three operators of different types of local media channels:
Ryan Heafy runs a local media franchise model operation called 6AM City, which curates fun events and articles on light news topics in metro areas across the United States.
Jennifer Tripucka runs a handful of local media channels under the The Local Girl brand, which cover events and share fun news updates for areas around New Jersey.
Akoto Ofori-Atta co-founded a non-profit local news organization, Capital B, that covers matters specific to the Black community, including in-depth reporting and investigative journalism on challenging topics in these areas.
I suspect the conference organizers brought together these three people because they represent different approaches to covering local news, both in terms of content and revenue strategies.
6AM City and The Local Girl primarily focus on curating local event information, including new restaurant openings, water parks, and cool shops. They help people plan their weekends and provide periodic updates on small bits of news here and there. This content is fun and delightful, and also attracts advertising dollars directed toward an audience primed to spend and make social plans.
Capital B offers more investigative journalism. They report on topics like uncovering corruption in government or helping residents organize to fight the construction of a new industrial facility that will pollute their neighborhoods. This work requires more time and money, is riskier, and attracts fewer ad dollars.
Each content type requires unique skills and demands different levels of funding. That could be a great basis for conversation about funding options for various types of community and coverage, centered on curiosity, collaboration, and reflection. Local media is crucial, but securing funding can be challenging, so we need to be creative.
Not all strategies work for all content types
But practically before the panelists sat down in their chairs, Heafy took a breath, slouched into his chair, and suggested that they address the recent closure of a local nonprofit media outlet in Houston.
He was specifically referring to the closure of Houston Landing, a local media outlet in Houston that received a $20 million grant, which covered a variety of issues in the city and had to shut down after two years of operation. He said something akin to "Give me $20 million and I can create eight profitable newsletters in 24 months."
He implied that he'd mastered a profitable, replicable, and scalable model in 6AM City. Only incompetence prevented the fools at the Houston Landing (and similar non-profit newsrooms) from turning a profit. I don't know the guy, but the tone was unflattering.
Heafy arrogantly scoffed at the mere idea that nonprofit newsletters might be sustainable (or at least that’s how I interpreted his tone). Yet NPR and PBS have been creating excellent content for decades under a nonprofit model, so we know it can work.
He reiterated that local media outlets must generate revenue and challenged their value if they can't exist in the long term. What good are these news outlets if they're dead?
Of course, local media is indeed useless if it ceases to exist. He’s right about that. However, his disgust with the incident felt like an indictment of the non-profit model generally, presented adjacent to the proposition that he'd already proven with 6AM City that there was a much easier, more profitable way to run a local media business.
Media outlets need reliable financial support to continue in a meaningful way. However, the privilege evident in his statement is glaring. He equates his media products to those like Houston Landing. Yet these outlets are entirely different businesses with vastly different objectives. Let’s compare.
6AM City chooses not to cover the “hard stuff”
According to their website, 6AM City is a "hyper-local media company, focused on activating communities through daily email newsletters that aggregate the most positive, impactful local news + events."
They "consolidate everything you need to know about your city in one place, ensuring that, no matter which news outlet breaks the story, the most positive local news and events worth your attention are curated into our daily newsletter."
Their tagline is "Join our free daily newsletter. NOVAtoday1 delivers the most relevant, concise, need-to-know local news + events. No politics. No crime. No divisive topics."
6AM City is a local news and events curator that only covers good news. They don't seem to be doing much (if any) investigative journalism, which is far more expensive and risky than curating links to news reported elsewhere. The vibe is fun and upbeat. 6AM City is more akin to an influencer outlet than a newsroom.
Selling without disclosing affiliate relationships
They're also a consumption influencer. They have an entire section called The Buy through which they promote various products as an affiliate of StackSocial. I'm not a legal expert, but they appear to violate Federal Trade Commission regulations because I couldn't see any disclosure of their affiliate relationship.
According to the FTC's Endorsement Guides: What People Are Asking:
"You should disclose your relationship to the retailer clearly and conspicuously on your site, so readers can decide how much weight to give your endorsement...
When the review has a clear and conspicuous disclosure of your relationship and the reader can see both the review containing that disclosure and the link at the same time, readers have the information they need. But if the product review containing the disclosure and the link are separated, readers may not make the connection.
As for where to place a disclosure, the guiding principle is that it has to be clear and conspicuous. The closer the disclosure is to your recommendation, the better."
At the time I reviewed their site, there did not appear to be any disclosure of an affiliate relationship, let alone one that's "clear and conspicuous" or where readers can see both the recommendation and the disclosure simultaneously.2
Even more concerning, StackSocial's backend tracking system picked up my personal email address without my consent or knowledge. The email address StackSocial subscribed to their promotion emails isn't even the one I used to sign up for the 6AM City newsletter, which means they scraped my email from IP information (I guess?) and subscribed me to their sales emails without permission.
Within 12 hours of clicking the undisclosed StackSocial affiliate link, I received three promotional emails from StackSocial. That's sh*tty commitment to respecting your customer's private data (and likely illegal in places like California under their California Consumer Privacy Act, though I'm still not an attorney).
It’s fine to use affiliate links. But they may not have it “all figured out” if they can’t even figure out proper affiliate disclosure (or choose not to follow ethical and legal protocol).
Good vibes only vs. investigative journalism
I'm not suggesting there's anything wrong with “good vibes only” media outlets, but outlets like 6AM City are far from comparable replacements for outlets like the Houston Landing. 6AM City made an explicit decision not to cover anything negative, political, or divisive. They also curate news, benefiting from the time and resources that other news outlets have dedicated to investigating and producing the content.
The Houston Landing, however, covered all the topics 6AM City refuses to cover. Look at their Houston Landing website categories:
Investigations
Education
Immigration
Public Safety
Politics & Government
Environment
6AM City won't touch any of that (in large part because it's far more challenging to produce and monetize)! But someone should cover it, right?
What happens to our society if the media refuses to report on anything negative, political, or divisive? Who holds anyone accountable? Freedom of speech and freedom of the press enable journalists to hold our government and those in power in check. Not covering anything “negative” or “divisive” misses a hugely important element of local media coverage.
Let’s make honest comparisons
6AM City and the Houston Landing (or similar local non-profit media outlets) provide vastly different products to completely different audiences in ways that drastically change the business model and revenue sources.
There's plenty of space for a fun and delightful local curated newsletter like 6AM City. However, for Heafy to suggest that his influencer model could take the $20 million Houston Landing grant and do the job better multiple times over is a false equivalency.
Investigative journalism is far more difficult and comprehensive than influencing. Covering the "hard topics" is more expensive and less profitable, especially in lower socioeconomic communities. Those circumstances don't prove that the people who cover those topics are less capable of running media businesses. Nor does it mean that those topics and communities aren't deserving of good-quality media coverage.
I don't have access to their financial information, but it's clear that 6AM City's revenue includes meaningful contributions from advertising and affiliate income. They've made specific business decisions to limit content to those spaces that cost less to cover, are more amenable to advertisers, reach higher-income readers, and connect with readers when they are primed to spend money.
6AM City is also subsidizing its media channels with a commission-based product sales business. Lots of media outlets do this. The New York Times operates The Wirecutter, which is essentially a massive affiliate site. The Skimm newsletter feels increasingly like a giant sales pitch.
I appreciate that affiliate revenue keeps the lights on. However, affiliate revenue strategies also tend to work less effectively in communities where the audience has less disposable income.
People struggling to buy groceries won't be impulsively tossing bamboo sheets and golf simulators into their online carts while they read about how their school district leaders were convicted of corruption, or that children are at risk because measles outbreaks are increasing, or that the EPA has found carcinogenic contamination at a nearby community center.
Moreover, media outlets shouldn’t have to sell us sh*t to survive. Readers shouldn’t have to buy bamboo sheets and golf simulators to have journalists who hold community leaders and organizations accountable. High-quality media is a public good, and it’s worth investing.
Media outlets need to find ways to be fiscally sustainable; they are doing important work. They need to generate enough revenue to cover wages and expenses.
But scoffs at struggles for deep journalism outlets to remain solvent from "good vibes only" media curation channels, which operate only in upscale markets, cover rosy events, and subsidize those channels by hawking products on "daily deal-type" sites without disclosing affiliate relationships is rich.
Capital B is leading the way
Akoto Ofori-Atta, Co-founder and Chief Audience Officer of Capital B, another local media outlet, sat on the panel at the conference, just two seats down from Heafy. Capital B is "a nonprofit news organization dedicated to uncovering important stories about how Black people experience America today."
Like the Houston Landing, Capital B covers a variety of topics, many of which are challenging, political, and potentially divisive. They're also critical, even if they don't generate significant advertising dollars or encourage people to click affiliate links.
Investigative content is harder to monetize. Advertisers are less interested in having their sales copy appear inside articles about racism, environmental injustice, and embezzlement than in posts about pop-up shops, new water parks, and music festivals.
However, content that's more difficult to monetize through ads and affiliate income doesn't make those topics less worthy of good journalism. It simply means that the 6AM City model, which seems to work well for their content, does not work across all communities and content verticals. We need different revenue models to match the type of content being served.
We don't need operators like Heafy rolling their eyes at failed attempts to find solutions for content verticals his company explicitly refuses to serve. We need local media experts to think creatively and collaboratively, working together to build a better, more comprehensive, and ethical media ecosystem for everyone. A trustworthy media industry should benefit all creators and communities.3
Toward the end of the panel, Ofori-Atta mentioned to Heafy and the audience that she wanted to stand up for non-profit media outlets despite Heafy's disdain for them. She was encouraged by some of the truly creative things that non-profit outlets are doing to bring local media back from the brink of extinction.
Through his initial comments, he pretty much dismissed the sustainability of her organization's existence (knowing full well who she was and where she worked). I'm glad she held her ground a bit.
She didn't push back too much. I don't blame her as we sat in a conference hall filled with an abundance of nearly all white people and an over-representation of "bros," most of whom are unconcerned with issues like the mayoral racism in a small town in the Black rural south that was very important to Capital B's audience.
We need more local media of all stripes, and funding will vary
6AM City and Capital B are both great for building community and make our neighborhoods better (minus all those affiliate links that steal my email address and hawk cheap sh*t that most of us really don't need). Local media is really important!
However, we need to have better, more nuanced, and more thoughtful conversations about how to fund local media in different markets and for various types of content verticals. The message "it works for me, so I'm not sure why it's not working for you" is incredibly unhelpful.
We must acknowledge that different types of local media serve distinct purposes. Both can be important. But they aren't the same, and they require different means of funding, resources, and work. Creative funding mechanisms will become particularly important if and when funding for public media from Washington dries up. NPR CEO CEO Katherine Maher shares more about that below.
I'm not sure what the solution is, but I know it's not that one guy in Greenville, South Carolina, has it all figured out. We need various models to make local media effective, depending on who is being served and what they're sharing. And while they need to be sustainable, local media outlets don’t necessarily need to maximize profit or growth. Capitalism wants you to believe otherwise!
For all the reasons (and more) noted in the video above, local media matters. It's a public good worth investing in, not just a means for generating profit from the limited scope of news that yields the most revenue. Local media helps distinguish fact from misinformation, connects local residents to small businesses and one another, and holds local authorities accountable to their constituents.
I hope we can be more thoughtful about and committed to its future.
They have a replicable model of local newsletters in media markets across the nation. Their NOVAtoday franchise is one of the many outlets, but they all offer the same vibe and type of content for the respective metro areas.
There were many affiliate-linked product promotions without disclosure.
Perhaps I caught him on a bad day, and he’s doing the work of supporting local media across various verticals. I’m only reflecting on his demeanor the day I saw him.