The challenge is real: how do you grow your audience without breaking the budget — and how do you actually see a return?
Long story short, publications need to commit to change. Not a rebrand. Not a campaign. A fundamental shift in how you engage with your community — physically, digitally and at the level of actually building community.
These are some of the questions we need to answer collectively. Can you pull back on written story volume to make more room for real engagement with real people? How do you activate your physical paper instead of treating it like a liability? And is your newsletter transactional, or is it actually building community?
One thing is clear: you are not going to out-resource bigger publications. You won’t match their staff or their budgets. But you can do something they can’t — tell stories in a way that is uniquely yours, rooted in a community they don’t live in, don’t understand and can’t replicate. That’s the advantage. Use it.
There are no easy answers. But there are starting points. Here are four — free, low-lift and built for publications operating on tight teams and tighter budgets.
1. Go outside and ask one question.
Step outside. Find one person. Ask one open-ended question. Film it on your phone. Post it on your reels. Make it consistent. That’s the content.
“Tell me one thing you love about this city — and one thing that needs to change.”
“If you had to write America’s headline right now, what would it say?”
This isn’t a gimmick. It’s a signal — to your community and to the algorithm — that you are present, you are listening, and you are making space for real voices. The person you interview gets to shout out their passion. You ask your followers to follow them back. Real connection. Built through social media, not around it.
Do this every week and it becomes a signature. Do it for six months and it becomes a community institution.
2. Activate your print edition.
If you still publish in print, stop apologizing for it. Print is a physical object. It can be held. Hung on a wall. Felt in the hands. While every other newsroom is chasing digital, that’s your advantage — not your liability.
When your next edition drops, find a stylish community member. Have them hold up the paper. Tag them. Let them shout out their passion. Post it.
They share it. Their followers see your paper. Your brand travels — for free.
Here’s something worth sitting with: you own this product. You can do with it what you want. Nobody else controls what that paper becomes in the community. So make it a collector’s item. Make people want to hold it, frame it, pass it on. Don’t let it fade into the background on a street corner.
Take the back cover. Instead of leaving it as dead ad space, commission a local designer to create a full back cover graphic — something useful and beautiful. A how-to guide for voter registration. Step by step. Fun, bold, designed for the community. Something people tear out and put on their refrigerator. Something they photograph and post. The designer shares their work with their audience. Your publication shares it with yours. Two brands grow. One cover.
3. Treat your newsletter like a relationship, not a receipt.
Only 5% of consumers say they get their news primarily from newsletters, according to the Reuters Digital News Report 2025. That number should alarm you — but it should also motivate you to do it differently.
I recently had a discussion with publishers of the Black Press about how to reimagine their newsletter — to start with a philosophy to connect with their unique audience. For them, it came down to three succinct objectives.
Be Bold. Be Brief. Be Black.
And understand what that last word actually means. Language is more than words — it’s history, lived experience, geography. Black language is unique and the most imitated language on the planet. Why wouldn’t you use that power to connect with your own community? When you write to your readers the way they actually talk, think, and feel — not in press release language, not in corporate neutral — you stop being a publication they skim and start being a voice they trust.
Give your readers inspiration. Give them community news and stories. Give them a reason to feel something. The difference between a newsletter people open and one they ignore comes down to one thing — connection. Not spam. Not a transaction. A real human voice saying here’s what’s happening, here’s why it matters to you and here’s where we go from here.
4. Take a walk.
I’m not joking.
Get your team together and take a walk. One mile. From your office to a café, through a neighborhood, into the community you say you cover. While you’re moving, stop people on the street and hand out swag. Ask a few questions on the way. Step into a local business and introduce yourself — not as a journalist, as a neighbor. Ask if you can put a poster in their window. Hand the paper directly into someone’s hands and watch their face when they see themselves reflected in it.
Do this once a quarter. And don’t just walk your comfort zone — walk the parts of the city you’ve been ignoring. The blocks that don’t make the front page. The neighborhoods that have been waiting for someone to show up.
What you get out of one mile: physical interaction with real community members, team bonding, stories you would never have found sitting at a desk, swag and papers in real hands, and businesses that now know your name.
And while you’re walking — film it. Get the BTS footage of your team connecting with the community. That’s content, too.
The Walk is not a PR stunt. It’s a reminder of why this work exists in the first place. Bigger publications would never do something like this — and that is why you must.
The bottom line
These four ideas meet your audience where they actually are — on social, in person, in the neighborhood, and in their inbox. But none of it works without the willingness to change. Not tweak. Not experiment once and move on. Real, committed change in how you see your role in the community you serve.
That’s always been the job. It’s just more urgent now.
David Stuckey is an Audience Growth Manager working with local and Black press publications on community engagement strategy.