A Scrappy News Startup Plows a New (And Profitable) Model For Local News

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What does the future of local journalism look like? There isn’t a single answer here. In Baltimore, the Banner launched, with a newsroom of more than 40 staffers, thanks to the backing of their billionaire owner. In Iowa, Gannett sold one of their local papers, not to a hedge fund, but to a husband and wife team who run a local, independent site. In Jacksonville, a longtime local reporter is building a journalism collective, an outlet owned and shaped by its staff. In Chicago, a prominent non-profit newsroom got a $10 million grant to expand a program where locals document public meetings.

And that’s just some of the news about local newsrooms from this summer alone.

There is still an audience for local news, and it might be up to savvy journalists — including some with ties to a legacy outlet in their market — to successfully cover their communities on their own. For a case study in pulling this off, look no further than The Charlotte Ledger, founded by Tony Mecia, a former business writer and editor at The Charlotte Observer. 

Mecia and the team behind the email-first publication are carving out a viable, if complicated, path for local news that other would-be publications might emulate. The challenge is figuring out if their local conditions are right and if they’re personally up for the work that’s required to launch a publication like this. 

“Our mission is to deliver smart and essential news to Charlotte one email at a time,” Mecia says. So far, it’s working.

Capitalizing on Local Opportunity

Mecia first launched the Ledger on Substack in March 2019 as something of a lark. 

“My thinking was that Charlotte is a growing and dynamic city and could use more insightful local coverage,” Mecia later wrote about his approach to starting the publication. Substack was free and easy to use, so a failure wouldn’t cost much.

In the beginning, Mecia published four mornings a week — 8 a.m. on Mondays, Wednesdays, Fridays, and Saturdays. By July of that year, he had 1,000 subscribers. 

Email gave the Ledger a direct relationship with subscribers and kept their needs top of mind. Not being worried about website traffic meant that Mecia could focus on delivering the information he thought his audience needed, no extra clicks required.

“Just read the email and make it to the bottom and you’re done with it,” Mecia said. “That’s what you need to know.”

Charlotte, North Carolina, is a growing city that’s suffered local news cutbacks but still has a vibrant number of publications, including the McClatchy-owned Charlotte Observer; Axios Charlotte, which ran independently as the Charlotte Agenda until Axios purchased the outlet in 2020; WFAE, Charlotte’s NPR station; the local business journal, the Charlotte Business News, whose parent company is based in Charlotte; and even outlets in other languages, like the Spanish-language La Noticia. Within that local news landscape, the Ledger has started to find success. 

Mecia didn’t have a big local profile before starting the Ledger, but he knew the area well and had a clear audience in mind: people like himself, in their 40s or 50s in the Charlotte suburbs. He focused on accessible but serious journalism, in particular education and local business news. 

The location itself provides a natural limiting factor in terms of audience and topics, which further helps the Ledger focus. 

“It would be foolish of us to just do what everyone else is doing,” says Mecia.

Though some competing outlets exist, Charlotte isn’t a saturated market for news. That relative paucity means there’s an opening for Mecia and his team to create value — and thus convert subscribers. 

Turning on the Paywall

By November 2019, Mecia decided that he couldn’t continue indefinitely with no revenue. He was running the Ledger as a side hustle and getting by on a combination of severance money from an old job, freelancing, and his wife’s income. 

He put subscribers on notice that a paywall for the newsletter was in the works. By that point, seven months after launching, the Ledger had around 2,000 free subscribers.

Paid sign-ups opened in February 2020, and the paywell went into effect in March. Local advertising sponsorships started in January of that same year. In two weeks, the Ledger had gone from no revenue streams to two. 

Individual subscriptions cost $9 a month or $99 annually. (Compare that to the local business journal, which charges about $140 per year for a subscription, or the Observer, where digital access costs about $160 per year.) There’s also a higher-tier subscription for $379 a year, aimed at companies that want to grant multiple team members access to the Ledger.

Currently, the full Wednesday and Friday editions are for paid subscribers, but teaser versions of them are sent to everyone. (Mondays and Saturdays are free for all.) Showing free subscribers what they’re missing is a helpful conversion tactic, Mecia says. 

By late April 2020, less than two months after instituting the paywall, the Ledger had 500 paying subscribers. But converting the next 500 took until January 2021. 

“People want to see that you have a track record,” before they start paying, Mecia says. “Money’s not just going to start falling from the sky on the first day.” 

The Ledger’s continued to grow their audience — they now have more than 2,000 paying subscribers, plus several hundred extra subscriptions comped by paying members. In 2020, Mecia says, subscription revenue made up about 85% of the Ledger’s total revenue, with the rest coming from advertising.

Now, the team runs three additional newsletters. Transit Time (which covers transportation), and Ways of Life (which covers obituaries) both publish once a week and were added in May 2021. The former is entirely free. and the latter is only for subscribers. Futbol Friday, which covers Charlotte FC, the city’s new Major League Soccer team, is also a free weekly and started in February 2022.

They’ve also expanded beyond newsletters into events. Their first in-person “40 Over 40” event this April broke even thanks to local sponsorships and drew more than 250 people. Mecia said it was worth the effort to build the brand and reach new people.

What’s next for a growing local publication

All of this is done with just two full-time employees: Mecia and managing editor Cristina Bolling, who joined in April 2020. A small crew of freelancers contributes some of the reporting and content. (They’ve also been an Inbox Collective client since late 2020.) While the business is doing well, it’s still a startup. Both Mecia and Bolling now take a salary, though they funnel much of the revenue back into the business. They try to hand off tasks and projects whenever possible, but most of the work, from editing to selling ads, falls back on Mecia and Bolling.

“We’re not really paying ourselves probably what we believe we’re worth at the moment, but the growth path is there,” Mecia says.

Running a publication represents a shift for journalists who may be used to thinking of themselves as only reporters or editors. Not every journalist wants to or feels capable of being an entrepreneur. Running the Ledger is “definitely all-consuming,” says Mecia, noting that he spends at least 40 hours a week — and often closer to 60 — on the company.

With those time commitments in mind, Mecia says, it’s important to consider other responsibilities, like family. Mecia’s partner works full-time and provides the family’s health insurance. Their three children are in their mid-to-late teens. His advice: Prospective newsletter creators should take similar stock of their own lives to see if running this type of business is viable for them at this point in their careers. 

Mecia values the autonomy and freedom that come with running the Ledger and its growing portfolio. He and his team are out in the community and have a real connection to the area and their audience. Mecia also enjoys the challenging parts of the business, he says, including the business strategy. 

“As the one in charge, you have to deal with things big and small all the time,” he says, “and you can’t ignore the small.”

Mecia has to wear a lot of hats at the Ledger, and leaders in these sorts of roles often burn out quickly. But he credits his enthusiasm for growing the business, as well as the support he gets in his personal life, as reasons why he’s able to keep going without burning out, despite the long hours. For now, he enjoys the work, though he concedes that “not every journalist is going to be able to do this.” Some may lack the experience or interest in the non-journalism skills that are required, like audience and business development, marketing, or sales.

Overall, despite the hours and challenges for startup newsrooms, Mecia is bullish on the potential of this media model. “I’ve been surprised,”  he says, “that more people aren’t doing local journalism with newsletters.”

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