Study spotlights advertising, location in success of news sites

The Center for Cooperative Media at Montclair State University has produced a whitepaper called “Health and wealth in local news,”  in which the center “sought to answer the question: what do successful online local news sites look like today,” Poynter reports.  

Researchers interviewed 43 online local news publishers who represent outlets across the U.S. that produce substantive, independent, multi-sourced local journalism. Almost all are of the outlets are digital-native, and all are for-profit commercial enterprises, according to the center and Poynter.

For this project, researchers zeroed in on what it takes for an outlet to survive financially. The factors focused on were background of the publisher, experimentation with different revenue streams, and the wealth of the surrounding community.

Thirty-three 33 of publishers (77 percent) listed advertising as their primary source of revenue, with 87 percent of those who met the success criteria saying so and 65 percent of struggling publishers saying so as well.

Researchers also found that being in and/or serving a community that has at least a moderate level of affluence was key to success; 96 percent of thriving outlets were located in a community with middle, high, or mixed-income (meaning the population included both low- and high-income people).

Only one news site that the publisher identified as serving a low-income community met researchers’ criteria for success.

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