More local news outlets should lean into crowdsourcing
PLUS: How Riad Chikhani built one of the largest gaming media companies in the world
Welcome! I'm Simon Owens and this is my media industry newsletter. You can subscribe by clicking on this handy little button:
Let’s jump into it…
Longtime readers of this newsletter know that I’m probably more optimistic than the average person about the future of media, mostly because I subscribe to a very broad definition of what’s considered “media.” Most mainstream news outlets are extremely myopic and narrow in how they define media, hence why we see ridiculous claims that it’s headed for an “extinction” event.
The media pessimists are especially dour on the state of local news, and not for entirely unfounded reasons. There’s been a definite contraction in the space for the last 15 years, both in terms of the number of reporting jobs and the breadth of coverage. It’s hard to look at the number of local government meetings that now go uncovered by journalists and come away with the view that something important hasn’t been lost.
But still, I think the conversation around the state of local news is too pessimistic, mostly because it often ignores all the media startups that are rushing to fill in the gaps. In just the last few years alone, hundreds of small outlets have sprouted up to pick up the slack left by retrenched legacy media, and they’re building sustainable revenue models that are resilient to the vicissitudes of Big Tech.
As the industry rebuilds itself from the ground up, we’re seeing some consistent trends in how these outlets structure themselves:
They’re hyper-focused on local news: Gone are the days when local outlets would waste resources on syndicating national columns, reviewing movies, or employing Capitol Hill reporters. If there isn’t a strong local tie-in, they don’t bother covering it.
They’re owned and operated locally: Usually these outlets are launched by a longtime community member who grew frustrated with shrinking news coverage and decided to do something about it.
They’re extremely lean: These outlets don’t waste money on expensive offices or printing presses. Most get by with just a handful of reporters and then maybe one or two business operators.
I’ve interviewed dozens of local news entrepreneurs for my newsletter and podcast, and nearly every single one fits the above description. But there’s a fourth approach that I think nearly every local media outlet should optimize for: audience crowdsourcing.
What do I mean by that? Well, local audiences, because of their geographic proximity to each other, are uniquely primed to serve as the eyes and ears for any enterprising news team, and local media outlets should set up feedback loops that prime audiences into supplying those outlets with fresh news.
To give you a better understanding of what I mean, I’ll give you two examples of local news outlets that do this exceptionally well.
PoPville
PoPville is a local blog in my home city of DC. It was founded in 2006 by Dan Silverman and was originally called Prince of Petworth — named after one of the neighborhoods here.
What consistently blows me away about PoPville is how effective Silverman has been at facilitating a two-way conversation between him and local readers. He’s basically primed an entire city of inhabitants to have their smartphones ready to capture anything that’s even remotely interesting or newsworthy.
What does this look like in practice? Well, one of PoPville’s most consistent beats is the opening and closings of local businesses. Any time any sort of signage pops up in a particular neighborhood, PoPville is inundated with photos from his readers. Here are some examples:
PoPville is also exceptionally good at crowdsourcing tips about local malfeasance, often for stories that would never be covered by legacy media. For instance, a few years ago a reader sent in a tip about a creepy stalker who went up to her and asked her on a “coffee date.” After publishing that initial note, PoPville was then flooded with other sightings of the same guy:
This is service journalism at its best, and I’m constantly impressed by how often PoPville alerts me to stuff that’s not even on the radar of the legacy media outlets in my city.
6AM City
6AM City was co-founded by Ryan Heafy and Ryan Johnston in 2016. It operates newsletters in 27 cities and recently announced a VC funding round that it’ll use to expand even further.
As part of its MO for launching in a new city, the company hires two local editors. As one of those editors told me back in 2021, “The way that our co-editing experience works is that every day one of us is focused on the newsletter and the other editor is focused on our social media audience development.” By that, she wasn’t referring to social media content promotion; rather, that editor is assigned to actively engage with a wide range of local businesses and citizens. “We’ll be on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram going through and responding to posts from other organizations and community members,” she said. “Our goal with both emails and comments from readers is to be as close to 100% responsive as possible, making sure that our readers know there are two people on the other side of the product and that we're listening to what they have to say.”
That means that, within months of launching a new 6AM City publication, its readership is primed to constantly feed its editors with news scoops and other content. In my interview with co-founder Ryan Johnston, he gave several examples of how this feedback loop has allowed a 6AM City newsletter to develop extremely popular series:
Johnston told me an anecdote about a regular series the newsletters run called Be the Broker. “It’s a situation where maybe a landmark retail building comes up for a lease, and we crowdsource and ask everyone, ‘What business should go into this space?’” One year a building opened up for lease in Columbia, and COLAtoday readers suggested en masse that it was the perfect place to put a popular regional restaurant chain. “One day [the restaurant’s] Instagram started blowing up because our readers were begging them to come to Columbia, and six months later they announced they were coming to that location. They attributed the decision specifically to the conversation we had that morning.”
This is how 6AM City is able to include a wide breadth of coverage despite only having two editors: it basically creates an army of citizen journalists who are extremely engaged with their local communities.
And that gets to the heart of why I think more local news outlets should emulate these models. As I mentioned above, most local news startups today are extremely lean, which makes it harder for them to have the same breadth of coverage that you saw with large metro dailies in the pre-internet age.
But what these outlets lack in staffing can often be filled in by the community around them. Not only will these sorts of feedback loops enhance their coverage, it’ll also strengthen the relationships with the very people who pay to subscribe or buy ads. While there will always be a need for skilled journalists who can do things like interview sources and attend government meetings, I don’t think we should underestimate the power of the highly engaged local citizen who’s armed with little more than a smartphone and an email address.
Great piece on crowdsourcing. We have a full time staff of three in Charlotte NC and depend on readers to be our eyes and ears. This has traditionally been known as “source-building” but nowadays with social media and emails, you have have much more of a connection with your audience -- more of a two-way street than just pushing information to them. While you can crowdsource on social media, I would also say that there is a large chunk of people who do not use social media, and if you can tap into those folks you can really have original content -- in Charlotte, if something blows up on IG or X/Twitter, one of the TV stations or someone else will have it. We prime our readers to email us what they are seeing and it has allowed us to really offer non-commoditized, differentiated news and information. Our best-converting articles are almost always the result of reader tips, not attending the same press conferences or rewriting the same press releases as everyone else.
Extremely cheering take on how this new trend could revitalize local news.