How Local News Now built its loyal audience
Founder Scott Brodbeck walked through his content distribution strategy.
At a moment when many digital publishers are rethinking their dependence on platforms, Scott Brodbeck has quietly built a local news business that is far less exposed to their whims.
His company, Local News Now, operates a network of hyperlocal news sites across the Washington, D.C. suburbs, including Arlington Now, ALXnow, and FFXnow. While much of the media industry is grappling with declining referral traffic from Google and Facebook, Brodbeck’s sites still draw a significant portion of their audience directly—sometimes as high as 40% of total traffic.
That resilience isn’t the result of a single growth hack or platform arbitrage strategy. Instead, it stems from a set of deliberate choices about editorial focus, product design, and audience engagement—many of which run counter to prevailing industry trends.
“I think we have reasons for people to go to our site and not just read a summary on Google,” Brodbeck said. “That’s a good place to be.”
What emerges from his playbook is a model built less on chasing traffic and more on cultivating habit—a strategy that may prove increasingly valuable as distribution becomes more fragmented and less reliable.
In a recent interview, Brodbeck walked through every aspect of his audience engagement process, including how he automates his social media distribution, why he never shut down his website comments section, how he gets 40% of his audience to come to the homepage, and why he doesn’t bother with organizing live, in-person events.
Let’s jump into it…
Building a “Big Fish, Small Pond” Strategy
Local News Now’s origins were almost accidental. In 2010, while pursuing his MBA and waiting for a job at TBD.com to materialize, Brodbeck launched Arlington Now as a side project.
“It was a shower thought that turned into a business,” he said.
The early years followed a familiar pattern for local media startups: initial traction driven by search and social, followed by gradual expansion into neighboring markets. But the company’s growth trajectory wasn’t linear. Attempts to expand into Bethesda and Washington, D.C. itself proved unsustainable, forcing Brodbeck to shut down sites and even take on debt.
Those setbacks ultimately sharpened the company’s strategy. Instead of chasing scale across loosely connected markets, Local News Now doubled down on tightly defined geographic communities where it could become the primary source of information.
Brodbeck describes this as a “big fish, small pond” approach—a framing that captures both the opportunity and the constraint of local media.
“My dad was always a big fish, small pond guy,” he said. “That’s very much what you are when you do local news.”
The lack of competition in these markets—particularly for timely, original reporting—allowed the company to establish strong brand recognition and audience loyalty. Over time, that positioning would become one of its biggest strategic advantages.
The Strategic Bet on Original Reporting
As the media landscape evolved, Brodbeck made a clear choice about what kind of content his company would prioritize: original, on-the-ground reporting.
That decision looks increasingly prescient in the context of AI-driven search and the decline of commodity content. While publishers reliant on aggregation or SEO-driven explainers face mounting disruption, Local News Now’s coverage often represents the only available source of information on a given story.
“If I owned a site that did commodity content… I’d be quaking in my boots,” Brodbeck said.
This distinction matters not just for search visibility, but for user behavior. When readers can’t find equivalent coverage elsewhere—or when they want additional context, photos, or community discussion—they have a reason to visit the site directly.
It also reinforces a broader shift in media economics: as platforms become less reliable distributors, differentiation at the content level becomes more critical.
“If you’re not doing [original reporting], then you’re going to have a tough time in the years to come,” he added.
Automating Distribution Without Over-Investing in It
While many publishers devote significant resources to social media strategy, Local News Now has taken the opposite approach: automate the basics and move on.
On a typical day, Brodbeck spends no time manually posting to social platforms. Instead, the company relies on a series of automations—built using tools like Zapier and RSS feeds—that automatically distribute new articles across Facebook, Twitter, Threads, and Instagram.
“I spend zero minutes on social media,” he said.
The system doesn’t stop at initial distribution. Additional automations identify top-performing stories and resurface them later in the day, while tools like Bannerbear generate visual assets for Instagram posts.
This approach reflects a clear prioritization: social media is treated as a utility, not a core product.
“The social networks… are still important channels,” Brodbeck said. “But I don’t want to spend a ton of time trying to produce content exclusively for the social networks.”
That stance stands in contrast to many digital publishers that have built entire teams around platform optimization. For Local News Now, the goal isn’t to maximize engagement within platforms—it’s to efficiently capture whatever referral traffic they still provide.