Welcome to the Local News Experiments Project

From the outset of the GNI's Local News Experiments project, transparency has been a key pillar of our work. In collaboration with news industry partners, we've been testing different product and business practices in hopes of creating a playbook for sustainable, all-digital news operations in communities currently underserved. The point of all of this work is to share back information with the broader ecosystem.

We've kept pretty busy over the past year. In 2019, we partnered with McClatchy to launch our first site, Mahoning Matters, in Youngstown, Ohio; McClatchy then went on to roll out the Longmont Leader, in Longmont, Colo this past June. In February, we expanded our experimentation to Europe with UK publisher Archant, launching Peterborough Matters.  Most recently, we worked with non-profit Cityside to launch The Oaklandside in Oakland, Calif.

Now, however, it's past time for us to share back what we've learned to date, so we are excited to launch this new site as a venue to do just that. Going forward, we, along with our publisher partners, will regularly share new updates on lessons learned around topics like product thinking, editorial strategy, reader revenue, analytics, customer acquisition, ad sales, and business operations.

We hope these insights are useful to you in developing your own products and businesses. Thank you for visiting and stay tuned for more launches and information to come from our experiments.