Innovation and brand clarity in local newsrooms

Up in the north of England, Blog Preston is doing something interesting.

“Our overall audience growth is on an upward trajectory at a time when it has never been more difficult to get the audience out of search, social, or any other referrer,” founder Ed Walker tells me. “And yet, we are seeing growth. We are able to get through that and past that.”

That this independent local news outlet has managed to hold its own is remarkable, but the reason is straightforward: it’s anchored in the heart of the community and takes its obligation to serve that community incredibly seriously.

The challenges for local newsrooms

This year’s State of Local News report (from The Local News Initiative at Northwestern University) reports that in the first quarter of the 21st century, “close to 3,500 newspapers have vanished, leaving one in every four Americans with limited access to a local print newspaper”. In the UK, 293 local newspapers have closed since 2005.

Dr Richard Fletcher, writing in a report for Reuter’s Institute earlier in the year, remarked that local news used to have a “de facto monopoly over the provision of certain types of local information”. Of course we know this to be true: schools, local club sports, elections, classified ads, and notices of groups and events were all things readers expected to find in the pages of their local paper. Digitisation has been disruptive - and social media in particular has muscled into that space, often more efficiently than its print relation. Local news has felt this shift acutely.

In the same report, Fletcher made the case that the expectation of how to best access news-type content and that which is more ‘social’ in scope are often different - and this depends in part on the locale.

The key point here - and something very much at the core of this commentary - is that though the appetite and attitudes vary enormously between markets, the common denominator for successful newsrooms working locally or hyperlocally is that they have a clear understanding of how their demographic and content interact with each other.

In other words: newsrooms that stay on brand and in tune with their readers’ needs, tend to do better.

Three things we can learn from Blog Preston’s experience

And so back to Blog Preston.

Founded 16 years ago by co-editor Ed Walker, then newly-ish graduated from journalism school, it filled the gap left by a local weekly newspaper, The Preston Citizen, which had recently closed. It has been growing since, and has become a byword for news in the area. As Walker himself says:

“In Preston, people use it as a shorthand. They will just say, “Have you seen it on Blog?” in the same way that they might say “have you seen it in The Echo?”

So what would he like smaller newsrooms to know?

1.Even smaller outlets can benefit enormously from editorial analytics support

When The Guardian or New York Times report their latest technological investment or innovation, it can seem far, far removed from the experience and reach of a town or city publication serving thousands, not millions.

But even with comparatively modest readership figures, it’s possible to reveal insights into audience behaviour through data analysis - and that can inform and shape strategic decisions.

This is absolutely key: having an editorial analytics system, or getting engagement data is one thing, but leveraging those reports into better, more engaging content is something else.

In Blog Preston’s case, they have done this with daily CPI reports. CPI (Content Performance Index, read more here) is a compound metric unique to smartocto (the editorial analytics company this writer works for), but the point here is less about the specific tool, and more about understanding how and why it’s useful.

“Our daily reports look at the previous day’s stories, and they’re ranked by CPI. We’re not that bothered about total page views; we’re much more interested to know which stories and topics are cutting through. Do we need to follow up on those? From what angle? Which user need? We’ll take a careful look at everything scoring over 800 CPI because these are things which clearly engage our audience - and we take that very seriously.

2. Find a business structure that suits your community

“Because we’re committed to remaining free to air, we were always going to have to have some kind of advertising model,” says Ed. When the site was redesigned last year, Ed and the team were keen to ensure that advertising felt like it was integrated into the site, and not feel like it was bolted on.

“We’ve now got the option for people to support us if they want to,” says Ed Walker. “It’s not - emphatically not - a paywall. We set ourselves up as a CIC (Community Interest Company), and we’re part of the city. To suddenly turn around and say you have to pay £6.99, or whatever, to read community stories doesn't fit with our brand. For us, Blog Preston is about getting those stories read and shared and integrated into the community. So framing contributions in terms of ‘membership’ felt better - and felt right.”

Having a membership effectively removes adverts from the user experience, but fundamentally the mission is to ensure that everyone in Preston is properly informed about what’s going on in the city.

3. Niche is not only nice, it’s essential. Know your audience.

“A lot of organisations will tell you: we are reader centric. We are audience first. But are they really?” says Walker. “If you're just looking at something that did 50,000 page views for you yesterday without understanding why it did that well, you’re missing an opportunity and your successes may run the risk of being happy accidents. We are starting to get that much deeper understanding of what Blog Preston readers really want to read about, and therefore we're able to give them that again and again and again.”

Be the change - lead the charge

When Blog Preston was started back in 2008, it was into a climate where local news was already feeling the pressure of media digitisation, the rise of platform-based communications and (at least in the UK) had become synonymous with ad-heavy, free papers. The multiple factors converging - economic downturn, rise of digital, shifting relationship between reader and reading material - meant that these kinds of papers were facing an uphill battle.

It was because of training at the city’s university, the University of Lancashire’s journalism school, that Ed was inspired to reinvent a local paper in Preston to be an online blog rather than a traditional print publication. It may not be staffed by a bull pen of full time journalists and editors, but it is contributing to its central brand values: to be integral to the community it defined as its own, to be self-sustaining, and to stay relevant. Its 2.8fte staff structure includes freelancers - as well as paid interns from that very same university that trained Ed.

Just as with the USA’s Report for America model, that sought - and seeks - put journalists into rural and under-represented communities and newsrooms, so too have Blog Preston positioned themselves as an aide to empower the community they serve.

“We have a strong information ecosystem in Preston partly because we have a large, well read, independent media title that can circulate messages about what's actually going on here.”

You don’t have to be national or international to see growth. It all starts with a clear sense of purpose and a focus on the intersection between your community - and the content that community needs.

This blog was first published on the INMA website in November 2025.