This week we’re joined by Daniel Ionescu, founder of The Lincolnite, an independent local news publisher in Lincolnshire. He is also the founder and editor of new local news platform MyLocal, which is setting out to create a sustainable ecosystem where local journalism, communities and businesses can thrive.
Daniel talks us through why he got into local news in 2010 and the opportunity he spotted to make local news much more up-to-date when compared to the digital efforts of local news organisations still tied to the print cycle. He explains how MyLocal came about, and how they anticipated some of the problems publishers are facing today with the decline in social media traffic and challenges around sustainable revenue streams.
We also discuss the importance of building human, direct relationships to build trust in local news titles, whether collaboration between large and small outlets is realistic, and if local news can ever truly be sustainable.
The past 12 months in local news developments will be one of the chapters we explore as part of our upcoming Media Moments 2023 report. Find out more and pre-register for the report here.
Here are some highlights from the episode:
Founding The Lincolnite
About 13 years ago, in 2010, when I graduated from the University of Lincoln, where I studied journalism. Based on the local media landscape we had at the time, we came up with a simple concept, which was still a big thing in local media back in 2010, which was ‘today’s news today’.
So the environment in which we were operating at the time was a daily local newspaper from one of the national companies. But with a website as well, of course, everybody had a website by 2010, but the news on the website was the news from the paper at five or 6amm put on that morning, which was obviously the news from the previous day, if not two days ago. So anything that was happening on that day relating to traffic, policing, or any other updates.
So we created The Lincolnite in a newcomer’s image really also with my experience at the University and what we were wanting to find out, how to navigate our daily lives in Lincoln. And The Lincolnite was the place where you could do that and find out the latest stuff going on in companion with everything else that was happening in in Lincolnshire, and that’s how we really started The Lincolnite and the simple concept behind it.
Of course, it evolved a lot over over the past 13 years, I was going to say it has changed so much. But that’s also what spurred our idea and transition to MyLocal which is the next stage of evolution in what we’re doing, both as a publication and as journalists.
Mixed revenue for local news
The whole reason why we created the MyLocal platform – which is not a publisher, but a technology platform – is that it enables independent publishers and other publishers like ourselves to operate in an ecosystem where they can generate revenue, and support the news operations. But it’s part of a wider move.
One of the things we sometimes ask clients or prospective clients is, if you spend your money with Facebook, have you ever seen anybody from Facebook in your community coming around and speaking to people doing awards, reporting stories, or even just being there in any way or another? No. If you don’t invest in your local alternatives, you will not have a local alternative all together.
But we also know that we can’t rely – and that’s what the pandemic showed us – you can’t rely just on one single source of revenue, which is what again, most publishers have been doing historically, whether it was newspaper sales, whether it was classified, or anything in between. You have to have a very healthy mix, which is why we have our own advertising network on the platform.
We have our own classified section, again, with jobs, events and properties. And then we have the memberships system, which we introduced, it’s a selective paywall. Not every story is behind a paywall. Maybe about 10% of the stuff that we create goes behind the paywall. And similarly, 99% of the overall content that you can find on the platform is free to read.
Creating an opportunity for people to have a way of supporting these local news organisations is super important. And also freeing them from the shackles of having to maintain a website or maintain the platform. Just focusing on what they’re doing, which is reporting and engaging with local businesses.
Why social media won’t save journalism
We still have a lot more work to do. But we have a vision and an idea. Because I really don’t believe that developers or entrepreneurs in California, without any journalism background, or even having spent an hour in a newsroom, or knowing how a newsroom operates, or the requirements of a newsroom, would be able to speak to any local communities anywhere. They’re not going to be the ones who come up with solutions to save journalism.
Even the biggest social network today started from a totally different concept, which had nothing to do with what it pivoted to be today, or the role it has played in the last 15 years, whether it’s upending democracies or finding long lost friends, it has a really, really wide range. But it certainly hasn’t saved journalism or media in any kind.
And I also don’t believe in making them pay. Because they’re a business. I’m sorry, I wish I could be super selfish and say, ‘Yeah, they have to pay,’ but they already laid their bed, we know what’s happening in Canada, there hasn’t been any news in two months on the entire Facebook from that. It happened in Australia in 2020, we had the first taste, so we knew it was going to happen in Canada. And if we’re going to be trying to do the same legislation here in the UK, we’re even a smaller player, and we’re going to get the same back from all the social networks, which is why we are ready with MyLocal to tackle anything that happens in that particular arena.
