So if you’re here, you are probably already sold on how important local news is. But where do you start if you want to take the plunge and create a new local news website for your community?
There are a lot of resources out there and it can be tough to know exactly where to begin.
No worries, we are here to guide you through the process of starting a news website step-by-step.
Step 1: Pick your spot
The first thing you need to do is figure out the area you plan to cover with your news website and how you plan to cover it. There are a million ways that you think about this, and there are some articles that recommend conducting surveys and focus groups to confirm if there really is a need out there for your new publication… but we think this is taking it too far.
Our advice is simple:
Don’t overthink this. Look at what content is out there in your area and if you notice there is a hole in content that you think should be provided by a news website, then go for it!
That’s exactly what a very successful California local news site called Berkeleyside did - they saw that newspapers in their area covered city news, but there was no comprehensive content about their neighborhood. They also wanted to create a forum for their neighbors to debate issues that they care about.
They didn’t run surveys and spend too much over-analyzing, they just saw the gap and they went for it. There is plenty of time for surveys later if you are having trouble building an audience with your content. (see Step 4)
The bottom line here is this: if you see that news coverage is missing and you want a new place to engage with your neighbors that is a good enough reason to create your own news website.
2020 Local News Digital Review
Check out our free report on the technologies and digital strategies used by local news sites
Step 2: Make sure this is for you
But before you go too far down the road, make sure that you are going to be able to keep this going - consistently. Take it from us, writing takes dedication and commitment, especially when you are trying to keep up a regular news website that needs to be updated frequently.
Open up a Word Document or Google Docs and just start writing about the topics that you want to cover in your community.
When you have around 5 articles good to go, you should feel good enough to move onto the next step.
If you are struggling with topics to write about, check out some of these reporting guides from the Center for Cooperative Media at Montclair State University.
Also, know that this is a marathon not a sprint. Make sure that you are in this for the long-haul and you can support yourself without making any money from your news site at first. The founders from Berkeleyside went 18 months before they started to pay themselves a salary.
Step 3: Set up your tech
One of the main reasons we are building Epilocal, is that we want to make the process to create a news website so simple that all of you have to do is start writing and we will handle the technology for you.
But if you’re not using our NewsCloud, the process to set up your tech looks something like this:
Choose a domain and set up web hosting
For the domain name, there are lots of options out there and they don’t really matter too much - you can go with GoDaddy or any other provider depending on what works for you or whoever gives you the best deal.
There are also lots of options to choose from for your site hosting and the process looks slightly different for each one. Many of the local news sites that we analyzed as part of our 2020 Digital Review were using WP Engine. (This is assuming that you use Wordpress as your content management system - see the next step)
Install your Content Management System
Next, you need to set-up your news website and the easiest way to do this on your own is by using a Content Management System or CMS. Again, there are several out there, but the most common one for news sites is Wordpress.
Wordpress might not be the fastest or easiest to use at times, but it is a solid option that has tons of support in the community so you can always find answers to your questions. If you use WP Engine, they will guide you through the setup process. Otherwise the control panel for your hosting provider should have a shortcut for installing Wordpress or an installation guide.
As part of our NewsCloud platform, we use Ghost as the content management system because it has a great suite of free membership tools built-in. If you decide to go with Ghost, you can use the Ghost Pro hosting service which offers very reasonable rates starting at $9 / month.
Style your website
Once you have Wordpress or Ghost up and running, you have lots of options to get the design and style your website just the way you want it.
This can be an overwhelming process and we recommend starting with something simple where you can just focus on writing - then over time you can learn about all the theme options that Wordpress has to offer.
If you are using Ghost, you can start with our free theme that we made specifically for news sites called Newsliner.
Get publishing
Now that you have your website up and running, you just need to start adding content to it. You can write and publish your content from directly inside your Content Management System. Wordpress takes some getting used to and you will want to read some articles about the quirks that go along with it, while Ghost is pretty simple and intuitive.
On the flip side, Ghost is not very expandable while Wordpress offers a wide range of plugins that you can add to customize your site further. Here’s a list of some of the more popular plugins for news websites.
At the beginning, the focus should really be on your writing and news content rather than on the technology itself.
There’s some good advice in this playbook for creating a local news site from Harvard, that sums it pretty well:
“Keep your tech as simple as possible and suppress the urge for customization until you get good help and good advice.”
We couldn’t agree more, keep it simple and just focus on publishing consistently - even if its not pretty at first.
Step 4: Find your voice
As you start writing and publishing, you will gradually find your voice, what you want to cover and what type of content your audience responds to.
Again, try to keep this simple at first - focus on a narrow range of topics or geographic area. Especially if you are only one writer there is only so much you can cover.
If you are struggling to find an audience, now would be a good time to do a little research and to focus on getting the word out about your news website.
The same Harvard playbook recommends a couple of good ideas for researching what topics are important in your area:
- Use a free tool like Google Forms to design a survey and distribute it in your community
- Test out local interests using Facebook and Google ad targeting tools (you can do this without buying any ads)
Getting the word out and driving more people to your site is also important at this point. There are of course the traditional digital options social media and digital advertising.
But even better than that for a budding local news site is this idea from an interview with the founder of a local newspaper in Lehigh Valley, Pennsylvania:
“In the first year, we had the opportunity to trade advertising on the site for advertising at events. That really helped push our name out even further. As the site continues to grow so does the ability to sell ad space on the site.”
Basically this means that rather than charging a local business for advertising space at the beginning, you will give it away in exchange for them getting the word out about your news site.
Then once you get big enough, you already have a relationship with that business so you can easily upgrade them to paying customers.
As you find your rhythm, now is also a good time to put in place processes and find tools that will save you time. We are big fans of Trello for managing your content schedule and we also built a free chart maker for displaying data in simple, modern charts. There are also great tools out there from sites like Study Crumb, that will save you time with quick things like capitalization, checking readability and paraphrasing content you want to re-use in multiple places.
Step 5: Build a business around your news website
Once you have a good rhythm publishing content and are building an audience, you can start to think about building a business around your website. To give you an idea of how long it takes to get to this point, Berkeleyside, that we mentioned above, began offering paid advertising to local businesses about 6-months after launching.
In the same interview, they summed up nicely the other options out there to look at for generating revenue and building a sustainable business around your news website:
- Membership revenue (from subscribers and donors)
- Syndication (selling your articles to bigger newspapers who want to reprint them)
- Events (with revenue from tickets and from signing up sponsors)
- Merchandise
- Sponsored content
- Classified ads
As part of our digital local news review, we also looked at the different ways that publications were monetizing. We summarized all the most popular local news business models this this article, but in short the most popular option was to combine donations with advertising.
Finally, if you are interested in forming your news website as a non-profit, you can look for grants and other funding opportunities.
Here’s a good resource on forming a non-profit organization and this article from the Knight Foundation sums up some of the best funding opportunities for non-profit newspapers.
Step 6: Find a support network
Finally, once you are on your way to getting established as a local news site, you will want to connect with other people who are doing the same thing.
If you are a nonprofit, you can join the Institute for Nonprofit News.
Otherwise, you can join the Local Independent Online News (LION) Publishers.
Both of these are great networks with over 200 members and lots of resources to help you learn and share experiences.
Ready to get started?
Local news is one of the cornerstones of a strong community and now more than ever it is important to provide information and a voice that your neighbors can trust. If you are ready to get started building your own news website, follow the steps above to get your voice online.
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