The nonprofit formula? local, loyal & lists

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The nonprofit formula? local, loyal & lists

Insights from Nieman Lab, Simon Owens, and Axios on sustainable models in our fragmented media economy

James Breiner

Aug 14

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You’re reading the Your News Biz newsletter. My goal is to help digital media entrepreneurs and small businesses find viable business models.

This week is a list week. I came to love lists when I worked as an editor and publisher with American City Business Journals. We did as many as 100 Top 25 lists a year.

Readers loved them. They were a tremendous generator of paid subscribers, advertising revenue, and web traffic. Every list told a story: who was up, who was down, who was new, who fell off the list.

Depending on the industry, the ranking criteria might be total revenue or profit (for public companies), total partners (for consultants, law firms), real estate lending (for banks), SBA loan recipients, kilowatts installed by solar energy companies, or luxury home sales, to name a few.

Joshua Benton | Nieman Journalism Lab — Joshua Benton, photo from Nieman Lab

Which brings us to Nieman Lab’s Joshua Benton. He has done his usual cautious, in-depth reporting, this time on the Top 25 nonprofit news sites in the U.S., ranked by total visitors. He starts with a disclaimer:

“Nonprofit news sites have an interesting relationship with web traffic. Many of them were founded specifically to do the sorts of journalism that aren’t likely to trigger Chartbeat spike alerts: investigations, policy deep-dives, niche topics, or coverage of overlooked and disadvantaged communities.

“Most nonprofit outlets don’t run advertising, which means they lack the primary incentive commercial news sites have to chase traffic.” — Joshua Benton, Nieman Lab

Thanks for reading Your News Biz! This post is public so feel free to share it.

Riches in niches

You’ll find Nieman Lab’s complete list here. What I find interesting is that 13 of the 25 focus on local news of smaller cities or regions — Vermont Digger, Salt Lake Tribune, Baltimore Banner, Bridge Michigan, Colorado Sun, and Honolulu Civic Beat.

The decline of traditional print and broadcast outlets in those communities has created a demand for local news that these outlets are filling. (The list also includes some big city outlets: The Chicago Reader, The City (NYC), and LA Press.)

Rounding out the list are sites in niches by topic — The 19th (gender, news, and politics), Science News, National Catholic Reporter, and Forward (for Jewish audiences). Then we have investigative outlets ProPublica, CalMatters, The Conversation, Texas Tribune, The Intercept, and Mother Jones.

These sites survive and thrive on financial support from their individual users or sponsors who support public service. They all demonstrate what economists call market failures — that is, they provide a public service that can’t be supported only by free market forces.

Previously, Benton and Nieman Lab published a list of the Top 25 Local Newspaper websites in the U.S.

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Not Top 25, but 65 (and growing)

Sixty-five media case studies so far — that’s the commitment of Simon Owens’s Media Newsletter on Substack.

Here’s what Owens has to say:

“I’ve set a goal for this newsletter: to build out the world’s largest database of media case studies. I seek out the most successful media entrepreneurs and interview them about how they built their businesses.
My goal with every case study is that you can walk away from it with actionable insights that you can incorporate into your own content operations.” As of this writing, he’s up to 65. You can see them all here.

I have to applaud him for being much more ambitious than I was when I started profiling media entrepreneurs 14 years ago. It’s taken me a lot longer to come close to his number. My first post, in February of 2011: Why 10% of your web traffic is more valuable than the other 90%.

I saw the opportunity for independent media was in niches that attracted loyal, engaged users. It seemed like a good idea at the time and still does.

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Investors, creators like newsletters

Sara Fischer’s Axios Media Trends most recent newsletter has a treasure trove of media lists.

Sara Fischer - Axios — Sara Fischer, Axios photo

“Creators on Patreon have received $10 billion in payments from fans since the company was founded in 2013,” she writes, quoting CEO and co-founder Jack Conte.

The privately held company has 25 million paid memberships on the platform and $2 billion flows to its creators annually, Conte told her.

Also on Fischer’s list: Substack (which hosts my newsletter) says it has 5 million paid subscriptions on the platform. It recently raised $100 million from investors, putting its valuation at over $1.1 billion, Fischer reported.

Audience measurement minefield

It’s getting harder to answer the question of who’s watching or listening to broadcast outlets, the Axios newsletter reported.

Axios has identified at least 142 measurement vendors for television and online content in the U.S. “The measurement landscape that underpins the $1 trillion global ad industry is more crowded and fragmented than ever, leaving advertisers overwhelmed with trying to hold publishers to account.”

Because of the confusion, many data consumers have turned to the longtime leader, Nielsen, even though they have questions about its methodology.

Last word: An ad solution for local publishers

I’ve just been looking over the website of Empower Local. It promises “local advertising at scale” — a solution for publishers looking for ways to tap into more local advertisers, and brands looking to advertise in local media.

Lots of studies show people trust local merchants and media more than national brands. Connecting these two groups is a common problem that has been exacerbated by ad fraud. Who can you trust?

Empower Local is saying all the right things, and I wouldn’t mention them except that they were recommended by a trusted, knowledgeable friend, Johnny Levy. He leads a monthly discussion group of publishers and tech people and also publishes a newsletter, Media + Data + Revenue, whose title tells you what it’s about.

Don’t take my word for it. Take a look and see for yourself.

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