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Layoffs in the local news sector are, sadly, a regular occurrence, but the founders of Block Club Chicago decided they weren’t going down without a fight.

In November 2017, the news startup DNA Info laid off its entire staff, and it was only a few months later that three of its editors launched a Kickstarter that raised over $183,000; they used that capital to launch Block Club Chicago, a nonprofit that seeks to put a journalist in each of the city’s neighborhoods.

Flash forward six years, and Block Club has a robust news gathering operation that’s funded by 20,000 paying subscribers, foundation support, and a growing advertising business. In a recent interview, co-founder Stephanie Lulay walked me through the site’s launch strategy, its unique approach to neighborhood-based reporting, and why she thinks Block Club’s model can be replicated all across the US.

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For much of its 130-year existence, State House News operated as a standard newswire service. Its journalists covered the Massachusetts state government and it then syndicated their content to regional and national newspapers.

But in the late 90s, owner Craig Sandler realized that internet distribution would allow him to sell direct digital subscriptions and vastly expand his customer base. Today, the service charges $4,000 a year to any company or organization whose business is directly influenced by the state’s government.

In a recent interview, Craig discussed how he built the direct subscription business, why he decided to sell a majority stake in the company, and whether State House News is shielded from the whims of large tech platforms and AI chatbots.

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Most people are familiar with newswires like the Associated Press and Reuters, but a much newer upstart called Stacker has devised a new business model for syndicating content. Rather than charging a fee for its articles, it instead gives away its data journalism to any publisher that wants it. It then charges brands a fee to create and distribute sponsored content across the thousands of media outlets that subscribe to its service.

In a recent interview, co-founder Noah Greenberg explained how Stacker works with publishers, its process for creating sponsored content, and why he has no interest in driving an audience to Stacker’s owned and operated website.

My Substack: https://simonowens.substack.com/

Mignon Fogarty isn’t just one of the world’s most popular podcasters, she’s also an incredibly innovative media entrepreneur. She launched her Grammar Girl podcast 18 years ago, and the success of that propelled her book onto the New York Times bestseller list. She also founded Quick & Dirty Tips, a media network she now runs in partnership with Macmillan Publishers.

To round out her media business even more, she’s launched around seven courses, all geared toward being a better communicator and writer. Thousands of customers have taken them, and they’ve opened her up to an entirely new customer base for her content.

In a recent interview, Mignon explained how she entered the courses market, what goes into putting together a course, and why she decided to partner with powerful distributors like LinkedIn Learning rather than create the courses by herself.

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Most companies buy advertising to drive sales of their products, but Andrew Curtin’s first sponsor mostly bought out of pity. It was May 2022 and he had just launched Construction Wave, a B2B outlet that covers the UK’s construction industry. He had absolutely no audience, but a major crane manufacturing company bought a $10,000 sponsorship anyway.

That $10,000 allowed him to hire his first editor, and over the next two years they built Construction Wave up into one of the leading publications in its sector. Its website is mainly monetized through high-priced sponsorships, and this year it hosted its first conference geared toward construction CFOs.

In an interview, Andrew explained how he got interested in the sector, where he found his initial readers, and why he thinks there’s an opportunity to launch a subscription data product for his industry.

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Like a lot of journalists in the mid-2000s, Tim Burrowes grew frustrated with his employer’s print mentality and its tendency to treat online publishing as an afterthought. At the time, he worked for an Australian trade magazine that covered that country’s media industry.

So in 2008, he and two co-founders decided to launch Mumbrella, a competing blog that published upwards of 15 times a day. Its gossipy comments section quickly attracted an audience of bored office workers, and within a few years it was hosting multiple industry events that collectively generated millions of dollars.

In a recent interview, Tim explained how Mumbrella made such a big splash so quickly, why he and his co-founders decided to sell it, and what he’s doing differently with his newest media startup.

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When Alex Halperin launched WeedWeek in 2015, he was entering an industry that had nothing but growth ahead of it. But what he didn’t expect was that the fragmented legalization across states meant that it’d be difficult to build a national audience. So a few years ago he pivoted to just covering California’s weed industry, and WeedWeek has since built a robust business monetized through both sponsorships and subscriptions.

In our interview, Alex walked me through what got him interested in the topic, why he built a customer publishing platform, and how he recently decided to team up with the LA Times on an investigative series.

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One of the great things about being a college journalism major today is that it’s incredibly easy for professors to build their own news sites and allow students to experience every aspect of the publishing process. Not that long ago, journalism students had few avenues for publication outside their college newspaper.

Lydia Chavez took advantage of this dynamic while teaching at UC Berkeley. In 2008, she and her colleagues launched Mission Local, a local news blog that covered San Francisco’s Mission District. It quickly gained traction within the community, and in 2014 Lydia spun it out into its own independent news organization. Today, it’s fully sustained by a mix of large and small donors.

In our interview, Lydia walked me through how she incorporated the site into her journalism curriculum, why she spun it out from the university, and whether she thinks Mission Local’s model can be replicated across the US.