A Tahoe publisher knows housing and fire matter to his readers. A newspaper serving three states needs more Wisconsin coverage. And a Pennsylvania public media newsroom wants additional stories connecting policy to community life. Their priorities differ, but each has found useful reporting through The Center Square.
How media companies can turn local hiring activity into recruitment advertising revenue
Google and Meta can deliver enormous scale. They cannot sit across from a local business owner, hear what that advertiser is trying to accomplish and build a campaign around the answer. Independent publishers can—and Collette Jacobs believes they should sell that difference with confidence. Her blunt rule for advertising salespeople: “Don’t show up and throw up.” Ask questions, understand the business and become the marketing partner an advertiser cannot get from a dashboard.
Local businesses do not need another complicated technology pitch. They need customers, calls and confidence that their marketing is working. As AI assistants reshape how consumers find plumbers, restaurants and other nearby services, publishers have an opening to help advertisers adapt - and to strengthen relationships built over years or decades.
Your newsroom invests in reporting, fact-checking and earning readers’ trust. But when your stories appear alongside content from unfamiliar sources, can readers see the difference? Newsmatics CEO David Rothstein believes making ownership and origins easier to identify can help accountable publishers stand out.
Diane Bedard entered a tourism agency’s website into Magic Spec, a sales tool from Broadstreet Ads that turns a prospect’s existing online content into a customized sample advertisement. She brought the resulting creative to lunch, and the response was immediate: “I want that. How much is it?” By showing exactly what the campaign could look like, Bedard eliminated the need to explain an unfamiliar digital product—and turned the demonstration into a sale. Instead of asking the advertiser to imagine the possibilities, she placed something polished, branded and tangible directly in front of the prospect.
A lawsuit can threaten a newsroom long before a court decides who is right. Holger Roonemaa, head of the investigative and fact-checking desk at Delfi Estonia, says an investigation into a political donor’s influence led to a claim seeking more than €400,000 against the publisher and its reporter. Reporters Shield covered the newsroom’s legal defense fees, helping preserve resources for further reporting. Delfi won in the first court instance, according to Roonemaa, but the appeal remains pending and the investigation remains online.
More revenue does not have to mean building another sales operation. During this E&P Solutions Series webinar, USA TODAY and XPR Media executives explored how publishers can tap existing agency demand for press releases and paid content, creating an additional revenue stream while retaining control over what appears on their sites.
For a news publisher serving readers where Iowa, Illinois and Wisconsin meet, regional coverage means following developments across all three states. As TH Media plans for a future beyond its longtime Associated Press relationship, it is learning how The Center Square can help fill those coverage needs.
Amsterdam News is expanding its partnership with Column to strengthen its legal notice operations, create more capacity for growth, and gain access to new high-volume notice business from the large organizations in Column’s Automated Placement network placing across New York.
A newsroom can win a lawsuit and still be destroyed by it. Years of legal bills, missed deadlines and relentless anxiety can accomplish what an unfavorable verdict never could: silencing journalists and frightening others away from the story. For a small publisher without in-house counsel or deep financial reserves, one legal threat can place the entire organization at risk. International media-freedom attorney Flutura Kusari warns that waiting until a demand letter arrives to build a defense may already be too late.
Mentor Medier’s developers were spending time maintaining article pages and homepages that Francis Lundh believed a specialized provider could handle. As chief product officer of the Scandinavian publishing group and CEO of its technology company, Unite, he wanted that talent focused on subscription products. Moving to Labrador CMS gave journalists more control over daily publishing while allowing the company to step away from custom front-end development. The shift put its development resources behind technology designed to strengthen reader relationships and grow the subscription business.
Rob Galloway already knew The Center Square’s reporting from its daily newsletter. What he hadn’t realized was that The Center Square was an open-access newswire. A sponsored post made that connection—and gave him a way to supplement local coverage with statewide stories his readers had reason to care about. For a newsroom that can’t get to every important story, that discovery opened the door to more coverage of housing, fire and other issues that hit home.
A local advertiser may need more than another standard display banner. It may need a podcast recorded at a neighborhood brewery, a sponsored story, a newsletter placement, a print campaign or a large, interactive digital unit that commands attention. Independent publishers can make those choices because they know the businesses, control their inventory and can adapt without waiting for an algorithm. Uriah Kiser of Potomac Local News and Julie Beth Maglio of the Hernando Sun show how publishers can use that freedom to build campaigns the largest platforms are not designed to deliver.
Daybreak is free. It requires no contract, no credit card and almost no work from the publisher. Yet Community Impact CEO John Garrett says the tool has delivered hundreds of advertising leads and helped produce more than $40,000 in documented sales. At a time when getting a business decision-maker to answer a call or open an email can be the hardest part of media sales, Daybreak helps interested prospects raise their hands first.
What if public-notice modernization didn't have to come at newspapers' expense? That's the question Arizona answered this summer when lawmakers approved a new framework that expands digital access while preserving the newspaper's role as the trusted, independent keeper of the public record. Rather than resisting change, Arizona publishers helped shape it. Their experience may provide a roadmap for news organizations facing similar debates across the country.
trusted relationships with local businesses. Duda gives them the white-label technology to transform those relationships into scalable, recurring digital-services revenue. Its enterprise platform helps media organizations deliver sophisticated websites and online tools that strengthen advertiser retention while helping local businesses attract customers and prosper. The publisher owns the brand and customer relationship; Duda supplies the infrastructure, automation and expertise working powerfully behind the scenes.
A newsroom can win a lawsuit and still be destroyed by it. Years of legal bills, missed deadlines and relentless anxiety can accomplish what an unfavorable verdict never could: silencing journalists and frightening others away from the story. For a small publisher without in-house counsel or deep financial reserves, one legal threat can place the entire organization at risk. International media-freedom attorney Flutura Kusari warns that waiting until a demand letter arrives to build a defense may already be too late.
Investigative journalism is supposed to make powerful people uncomfortable. But for a 12-person nonprofit newsroom reporting on forced labor, human-rights abuses and environmental wrongdoing, a legal threat can become more than a distraction—it can threaten the organization’s ability to survive. That is why The Outlaw Ocean Project joined Reporters Shield.
As public trust in journalism continues to face historic challenges, the Center for Integrity in News Reporting is recognizing the journalists helping rebuild it — one newsroom at a time. During a remarkable three-week stretch in June, CFINR presented its new $5,000 Integrity in News Reporting Awards to outstanding journalists in six states, marking the program's busiest month since its launch. The awards celebrate reporting that exemplifies fairness, impartiality and objectivity while encouraging news organizations to uphold those same standards. With 22 states now participating, the initiative is quickly becoming one of journalism's fastest-growing recognition programs.
AI is rapidly reshaping news publishing, but many organizations are still working through what responsible use actually looks like. E&P is putting its own policies and practices to the test by pursuing the Alliance for Audited Media’s Ethical AI Certification. Over the next three months, we will document the journey—from AI governance and disclosure practices to real-world challenges and independent review. The series will conclude in September with a live webinar featuring AAM, E&P, and a publisher that has successfully completed the certification process, offering practical lessons for news organizations of every size.
For local news publishers, keeping websites fresh without overloading already-busy newsrooms is a constant challenge. British Columbia-based Lodestar Media addressed it by integrating syndicated evergreen stories from Stacker into its daily workflow while keeping reporters focused on original local journalism. Over four years, the partnership generated an estimated 1.7 million pageviews, with Stacker-driven traffic increasing 101% year over year—demonstrating how carefully selected syndicated content can complement local reporting, boost audience engagement and extend newsroom capacity without adding staff.
Local publishers are being asked to meet and maintain quality journalism standards with fewer available resources: cover complex policy, hold government to account, grow reader revenue, and stand apart in a crowded market. John Derr, Director of Affiliate Partnerships for The Center Square, thinks a content partner should carry more of that weight. The Center Square’s new Partner Network is built on that premise: not just access to nonpartisan statehouse and public-policy reporting, but the newsroom resources, training, editorial access, and collaboration that help a partner put that reporting to work.
For many community newspapers, public notices remain a reliable source of recurring revenue. But for the law firms, registered agents and government agencies that place those notices, managing publication across multiple newspapers can become a time-consuming administrative challenge. As one North Carolina law firm's experience demonstrates, streamlining that process with Column helped bridge the gap between the service high-volume notice customers need and the recurring revenue publishers want to protect.
In this sponsored E&P interview, Jeremy Fields of Newsmatics discusses the changing nature of media trust, the rise of comparison-based news consumption and how Perspectify — a media transparency platform designed to help readers better understand publishers, ownership, perspectives and source credibility — is helping audiences gain a fuller view of the stories shaping the world.
As artificial intelligence becomes increasingly embedded in newsroom and business operations, publishers are facing growing pressure to answer difficult questions from readers, advertisers and regulators. How is AI being used? What safeguards are in place? Who is accountable when mistakes occur? To help publishers navigate those challenges, the Alliance for Audited Media (AAM) has expanded its Ethical AI Certification program, offering a framework designed to demonstrate responsible AI use while strengthening trust, transparency and accountability.
As artificial intelligence becomes increasingly embedded in newsroom and business operations, publishers are facing growing pressure to answer difficult questions from readers, advertisers and regulators. How is AI being used? What safeguards are in place? Who is accountable when mistakes occur? To help publishers navigate those challenges, the Alliance for Audited Media (AAM) has expanded its Ethical AI Certification program, offering a framework designed to demonstrate responsible AI use while strengthening trust, transparency and accountability.
As shrinking newsroom staffs continue leaving major gaps in statehouse and government accountability coverage, publishers across the country are searching for ways to preserve essential journalism without adding significant overhead. Increasingly, many are turning to collaborative reporting models and syndicated newsroom partnerships designed to supplement local coverage while allowing already-stretched staffs to stay focused on their communities. Among the organizations expanding rapidly into that space is The Center Square, a nonprofit newswire that distributes state and national reporting to more than 1,350 media partners nationwide.
Richner Communications, Inc., based in Garden City, New York, has selected SCS’s Community Advertising System to modernize and streamline its advertising, production and customer service workflows.
When Dublin Inquirer publishes a sensitive accountability story, the challenge isn’t just reporting the facts. It’s deciding whether a small, seven-person newsroom can afford the legal risks that sometimes come with telling the public what it needs to know. For editor and co-founder Sam Tranum and deputy editor Lois Kapila, those decisions once came down to late-night conversations and educated guesswork. Today, the independent Dublin newsroom relies on Reporters Shield’s Legal Risk Assessment service to help identify potential legal vulnerabilities before publication—allowing journalists to move forward with greater confidence while keeping important stories alive.
On June 3, 2026, in Los Angeles, California, Nota announced the debut of Intelligence. This new offering empowers media professionals by assisting them in selecting coverage topics and generating initial ideas, all seamlessly integrated into their current workflow.
As CherryRoad Media rapidly expanded to more than 100 newspapers across 18 states, one thing became clear: growth wasn’t being limited by demand — it was being constrained by operational bottlenecks. Instead of adding more internal resources, the company made a strategic shift — outsourcing one of its most complex workflows to unlock efficiency, accelerate revenue, and scale smarter.
