🌊 Revenue streams that reflect communities

Plus: $2,500 scholarships up for grabs for journalism students

Author

Paul Gewuerz
February 06, 2025

Your weekly briefing of stories from around the local news space about business, policy, trends, and more

Hello! Here’s what’s in this week’s issue:

» Revenue streams that reflect communities

» $2,500 scholarships up for grabs for journalism students

» Four pillars for the future of local media 

» Should you “shamelessly self-promote” your newsroom?

» Facebook groups replacing closed rural news outlets

🎧 Small Press, Big Ideas Podcast: An Innovative Journalism Model in Far West Texas

🌊 Revenue streams that reflect communities

A new report from Rebuild Local News and the Tiny News Collective dives into “Homegrown Advertising” and how smaller indie publishers are going about growing their advertising revenue. Among the top takeaways: offer a unique value proposition to stand apart from the Metas and Googles of the world, and try not to be tripped up by too many fancy tech tools. For those interested, there are two upcoming webinars in February to dive into the reports’ results further, links in the events section of the newsletter ↓↓↓

🤑 $2,500 scholarships up for grabs for journalism students

The Local Media Consortium is accepting applications for the LMC Scholarship Program. Five students will receive $2,500 scholarships with the possibility of renewal for up to three additional years. Applicants must:

  • Be a high school senior or graduate or a current college undergraduate

  • Plan to enroll in full-time undergraduate study at an accredited four-year college or university for the entire upcoming academic year.

  • Be pursuing a degree in Journalism, Media, or related field.

  • Have a minimum grade point average of 3.0 on a 4.0 scale (or its equivalent)

🏛 Four pillars for the future of local media

The LMA and LMF announce new leadership changes, as well as detail the four strategic pillars that are the foundation for many of its programs in this piece from Editor & Publisher. They also announce new initiatives, including one on AI, and three new statewide cohorts (California, Illinois, and New Mexico) for The Lab for Journalism Funding.

📣 Should you “shamelessly self-promote” your newsroom? 

This piece from the Institute for Nonprofit News shines a light on one leader who’s not shy about “shamelessly” self promoting his indie newsroom. Ken Shneck, editor of The Buckeye Flame, Ohio’s LGBTQ+ newsroom, has some advice for smaller publishers looking to stand out from the crowd: take up space, nail down your elevator pitch, and have measurable goals.

📱 Facebook groups replacing closed rural news outlets

This piece examines several smaller communities in southern Colorado where Facebook groups have become the de facto source of information for residents in the region’s news deserts. This trend is growing across rural America.

Events

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Small Press, Big Ideas

A podcast about the business of local news

An Innovative Journalism Model in Far West Texas

The term “sustainability” gets thrown around a lot in the local news space, but it’s rare that you see a truly innovative business model prove that it can actually work as a thriving business and a quality local journalism source. This week’s guest on the Small Press, Big Ideas podcast proves that creative thinking and embracing of the community can pay off, even in a small rural community.

When Max Kabat and his wife moved to Marfa, Texas in 2016, they had no plans of becoming involved with the town’s local newspaper. However, when the owners of The Big Bend Sentinel decided to retire after decades at the helm of the legacy outlet, they asked Max and his wife if they’d be interested in taking over. The answer was yes.

Max and his wife, documentary filmmaker Maisie Crow, began on a years long process of transforming The Sentinel from a standard print product with an advertising base into a print and digital operation underwritten by an updated business model.

In addition to the paper, they transformed the newspaper’s print shop into The Sentinel, a beautiful space that offers food, coffee, cocktails, retail space, events, and an overall community hub for the town of 2,000. Proceeds from The Sentinel go to support the local journalism provided by The Big Bend Sentinel.

In our interview, Max talks about the vision that led to the creation of The Sentinel, how thinking differently about the struggles faced by local news is a necessity, and how other communities can achieve something similar. To read more about Max’s thoughts, I highly recommend his excellent writeup on LinkedIn: Local Journalism is in the Wrong Business.

You can listen to our full conversation wherever podcasts are found (links above), or you can listen and read my full summary on my website: An Innovative Journalism Model in Far West Texas.

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