In 2007, Hurricane Matthew dumped four feet of water into downtown Whiteville, North Carolina. 

In 2018, Hurricane Florence brought another 23 inches of rain there in less than three days. 

The storms were devastating to businesses in Whiteville.

To the twice-weekly newspaper, those storms were existence-threatening. 

“We are relying on a lot of really small businesses, and if Walmart didn’t get them, if Amazon didn’t get them, then those two hurricanes were the cause,” said Les High, publisher of The (Whiteville, North Carolina) News Reporter.

Even without those two hurricanes, the family-owned paper faced the same existential crises of changing audiences and business models threatening a lot of local papers. But unlike a lot of other papers, the News Reporter has managed to replace what it lost in advertising with money from circulation, “almost to the dollar,” High said.

You can read about the strategies the News Reporter used to make big changes at Poynter, and over at API’s Better News, check out the tools the Pulitzer-winning paper used to become digital first. 

While talking with High and Jenny Clore, director of marketing, about this story, I thought of The (Charleston, South Carolina) Post and Courier. That newsroom, which was also in Table Stakes, had similar success with similar methods – growth with digital subscribers, a shift in how they use and view data, and a focus on quality, not quantity. They both also have local ownership.

I still get asked, regularly, what’s the thing that will save local news?

But I don’t think it’s just one business model or wave of benevolent billionaires or surge of help from tech platforms. Those things are part of the future of local news. 

So is the process of transformation itself.

The last decade has been existence-threatening. But like in Whiteville and Charleston, there are local newsrooms full of people now constantly testing, experimenting and adjusting to those shifting audiences and business models. 

Clore’s biggest lesson is a good one to follow if you’re looking for a way to get started: “What’s the data say?”


Staff from The News Reporter. (Image via Jenny Clore, The News Reporter)

While you’re here:

• I had so much fun (and got to wear an ‘80s outfit for a talk) last week in Detroit at the annual Society for Features Journalism conference. My editor Barbara Allen and I are going to share our talk soon, but this quote she shared is powerful.

• There’s still time to sign up for the Local Independent Online News Publishers conference next month in Nashville (I will be there!)

• And check out this excellent resource from Poynter’s NewsU on how to avoid defamation. 

See you next week!