MediaNews Group is a major publishing group across the United States. They own over 100 newspapers and 200 other publications. Their newspapers reach from California (Orange Country Register and Marin Independent Journal) to Florida (Orlando Sentinel and Sun Sentinel). They’re…
A few weeks ago, I spoke on the Scale podcast with Stewart Ritchie. One of things we discussed was that WordPress-based companies are building an infrastructure to help publishers to succeed. Even three or four years ago, that infrastructure did…
Last year, we covered Block Club Chicago, which is a WordPress-based news start-up. They’ve now reached their 5th birthday and have one of the most inspiring stories in new U.S. journalism. I dug into the Block Club Chicago story this…
We recently covered Block Club Chicago which was is built in partnership with the “Lede” platform from Alley Interactive. We’ve previously covered another Lede site called “Defector”. Lede is one of several new WordPress publishing platforms including Newspack, PaywallProject, and…
I popped onto the Scale podcast with Stewart Ritchie to talk about how WordPress is powering a lot of new publishers. The topic was the PublishPress plugins, and how running that business has helped us discover hundreds of publishing start-ups.…
The Local Media Association is a trade group that focuses on the business side of local media. They try to help newspapers, TV stations, and radio stations grow their bottom line. They’ve just put out a detailed report explaining what…
For five years now, the Institute for Nonprofit News has produce an annual report on the nonprofit news sector. Their 2022 report shows that independent local news is growing strongly. Here are 3 key points from the report: Since 2017,…
Blake Bertuccelli runs a WordPress agency called Decubing, based out of New Orleans. Blake recently announced that his agency will be donating 11% of their revenue to organizations that support independent journalism. The first donation was to the Prison Journalism Project…
The Patagonia Regional Times is a non-profit publisher that focuses on the Arizona communities of Canelo, Elgin, Patagonia and Sonoita in Santa Cruz County. They have been publishing printed and digital newsletters on a monthly schedule since 2009. Their motto…
Matt Mullenweg, the co-founder of WordPress, likes to pick a good honorable fight against closed, proprietary technology platforms. Matt is now choosing to pick a very valid fight against the fast-growing Arc XP platform. Dan Froomkin describes the start of…