Digital news startups

Here are highlights of a survey I conducted in spring and summer of 2013. Publishers of 53 independent local online news startups in the United States responded to the survey, which is designed to track progress of emerging local news organizations. Many of their specific responses are also published to site profiles on a searchable database designed to enable publishers to connect with others with like models and challenges.

Read my blog post: Local online news startups: Progress, profits and persistent challenges

While generating revenue is a critical challenge for most publishers, progress is evident – a third said they are operating at a profit and another third said they have developed at least one steady source of revenue. The sites operate primarily with paid staff, but only a third of the publishers pay themselves a full salary.

The organizations in this survey reflect several different types: About half cover a small town, community or suburb, a quarter cover a large city or metro area, 10 percent cover a neighborhood and the rest are regional or state in scope. About half cover general local news and about half are more niche, regularly covering a few topics at most. Approximately one-fourth of the 50 organizations are nonprofits. Most of the for-profits have LLC status. Their reach ranges from 2, 800 unique monthly visitors to 118, 000.

1. What are their key successes?

The editors and publishers report they are having success in producing journalism and raising their visibility in the community. More than many of their traditional counterparts, the startup leaders tend to focus more on engagement and cite progress there as well.

“Community engagement continues to grow exponentially- we document about a 3.5% growth in readers every week across 4 platforms: email subscribers, Twitter, Facebook and direct views, ” one publisher said.