Local News & Information

Audience growth, however, has rarely been romantic.

“We’ve gotten really good at Meta lead ads,” Heafy said. “We can acquire subscribers for under a dollar.”

Despite Facebook’s declining cultural cachet, Heafy remains blunt about its effectiveness. The company uses paid acquisition as a baseline, comparing every other growth tactic against it.

Often that expansion is accelerated by regional advertisers, acquisitions of smaller newsletters, or local economic development groups that actively recruit 6AM City to launch in their communities.

Historically, the company focused on mid-tier cities — places with strong civic pride but limited competition — rather than media-saturated metros like... See more

“We realized it’s almost better to empower a single editor in each market,” Heafy said, “and centralize the rest of the operations.”

Behind that shift was something few media startups bother to build: a literal playbook. Heafy described a printed manual, four to five inches thick, that detailed every step of launching and operating a local... See more

James Madison — a.k.a. Guy Who Wrote the First Amendment — argued that newspapers should have a massive subsidy from the federal government to encourage the distribution of newspapers. The “postal subsidy,” which provided discounted mail, would be about $46 billion in today’s dollars — bigger than the NASA budget.

Stop trying to make social networks succeed, stop dreaming of a universal network. Instead, invest in your own communities. Help them make long-term, custom and sustainable solutions. Try to achieve small and local successes instead of pursuing an imaginary universal one. It will make you happier.

It will make all of us happier.

"Our work is the most valuable where we're creating a discourse that isn't just informing people, but actually getting them involved with the creation of good information — because they value good information themselves and are part of a community that values that," he said.