elPeriódico is a WordPress Publisher Fighting Censorship in Guatemala

elPeriódico is a daily newspaper in Guatemala that often reports on corruption in the country’s government. The paper’s motto translates to, “Informative scoops and rigorous and deep journalistic investigations always.”

The paper was founded in 1996 by José Rubén Zamora. You can read about Zamora’s career on Wikipedia, but it’s safe to say that he’s a incredibly respect and brave journalist. Over the years, Zamora has been attacked, beaten, kidnapped, and held hostage. The Guatemalan government has tried almost everything they can think of to censor Zamora. This week, he was arrested on apparently false charges of money laundering. Voice of America has details on the case.

Despite the arrest, elPeriódico continues to report daily in print and on their WordPress website.

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FloridaPolitics.com is an Independent WordPress-Based Political Publisher

FloridaPolitics.com broke the news this week that the FBI was searching Donald Trump’s house.

Peter Schorsch is the website’s publisher and he broke the news on Twitter. This led to some positive stories about the website, but honestly it’s far from the most interesting thing about FloridaPolitics.com. The news about Trump would have broken anyway, and Schorsch was honest enough to admit: “TBH, Im not a strong enough reporter to hunt this down”.

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Show Authors on Your WordPress Magazine or Newspaper

You don’t have to work alone in producing content: the best writing is done in a team. If you’re using WordPress for a publication with multiple writers, I recommend that you try the PublishPress Authors plugin. With this plugin you can display the names of everyone involved in your posts. By default, WordPress will only show one user as the author. However, with PublishPress Authors you can show writers, contributors, editors, photographers and more.

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Verite Launches a Non-Profit Newsroom in New Orleans, Powered by WordPress

Earlier this year, I wrote about Mississippi Today which is a success story for non-profit newsrooms. This week, they’ve launched a new sister organization in New Orleans called Verite.

Both Verite and Mississippi Today are going to be part of a network of mission-driven, local news organizations called “Deep South Today”.

I’ve been blogging about local WordPress-powered news this year. Partly that’s been driven by a gut-feeling that something is exciting is in the early, formative stages. This is the kind of launch that confirms that feeling.

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INN Reports Strong Growth for Local News Startups Using WordPress

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, more than 135 nonprofit news outlets have launched. The number of newsrooms in the INN Network has doubled over the past four years and now exceeds 400 independent news organizations.

More than half of the news outlets that have launched since 2017 are local. Today, roughly 4 in 10 nonprofit news organizations are local, up from about 2 in 10 in 2017.

Nonprofit news is driving sustained, multi-year revenue growth. Two-thirds of news outlets surveyed increased their revenue, with a median of 25% growth during the last four years.

WordPress is the dominant platform for this local news growth. WordPress-powered publishers in this year’s report include Dallas Free Press, Charlottesville Tomorrow, Canopy Atlanta, The Daily Yonder, and more.

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