Newsletter Startup 6AM City Eyes Expansion And Revenues Of $10m
The business, which avoids crime and politics in its newsletters, currently has 24 local newsletters, having added 16 in 2021. It plans to be in at least 30 cities across the United States by the end of 2022 and expects to generate revenues of $10m this year. In a statement announcing its latest figures, 6AM CEO Ryan Johnston said: “We spent the past six years perfecting a highly scalable model for creating and growing our hyper-local newsletters in cities large and small.” In its prospective markets, 6AM City says it “has established partnerships with organizations looking to expedite economic recovery, including economic development entities, professional sports teams, and the entrepreneurial ecosystem”. Those partnerships, as well as their relationships with advertisers, are driving its expansion choices. “By the end of 2022, 6AM City will be operating in 30 or more cities, and continues an expansion strategy to operate in 100 or more cities over the coming years,” it said in a statement.
The company is currently advertising for four city editor roles, one of which will be in Tampa, Florida, (pictured) where 6AM is aiming to launch by July.
The South Carolina-based company told Press Gazette in July last year that it had 450,000 subscribers. It was then publishing its free newsletters in nine cities. By January this year, it was in 24.
Speaking to Press Gazette in 2021, 6AM City co-founder Ryan Heafy attributed much of the business’ success to its no-politics, no-crime approach to news. “Even if it was the mayor or somebody getting charged with some crazy sexual assault thing or murder or whatever, we don’t touch it”. Heafy said the aversion to politics helped it appeal to readers across the political divide.
The company is one of several that is currently expanding its local newsletter presence. Press Gazette reported in January on 6AM’s race against Axios Local in the United States.
Pressreader Reports A Disruption Of Its Service By Ransomware Attack
PressReader, the technology partner of the Arkansas-Democrat Gazette and the Northwest Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, said recently that a system failure that shut down its operation worldwide was the result of a ransomware attack. Canada-based PressReader reported a disruption of its service on March 2. The company said it saw suspicious activity and brought all sites and apps, as well as PressReader, offline for 24 hours as a defensive measure while it began an investigation. The network outage affected numerous sites and apps, including the Democrat-Gazette’s mobile and iPad apps. PressReader said it restored some services to some customers as early as March 3. Subscriber access to the Democrat-Gazette’s products through PressReader was fully restored on Sunday, March 6.
“We can now confirm that the network issues we experienced were caused by a ransomware attack,” PressReader wrote in a letter to Jay Horton, the president of digital at WEHCO Media, the company that owns both newspapers.
In its letter, PressReader said as part of its response to the attack, the company is working with cybersecurity experts in its investigation, assessment, and remediation efforts. The company said there was no indication customer information was compromised or that any partner systems or applications were at risk.
Postal Delivery Helps New York Newspaper
Last week’s column about Olympic Peninsula newspapers shifting to mail delivery led to several enlightening conversations. This is a hot topic in some corners of the industry. It also needs to be part of the conversation around saving local journalism, most of which is still done by newspapers.
The U.S. Postal Service and the News Media Alliance, a publisher association with big dailies among its members, could not provide data on how many papers are shifting from carriers to postal delivery. But the NMA did survey members about it, and nine of 21 respondents were “reconsidering” the use of mail because of increased delivery costs.
Mail delivery is helping the Rome Sentinel newspapers expand into a Gannett paper’s market “that was almost becoming a news desert, it was a USA Today shell with a couple local bylines,” he said. “It breaks down delivery boundaries,” Waters said. “We went from a 30,000-household catchment area with our carrier routes to a 300,000 population within the three counties that we look to cover. Economy of scale is on our side.”
As for switching to postal delivery, it helps that the Sentinel was already an afternoon paper so the transition isn’t as jarring for readers of the Port Angeles Daily News, who will no longer receive their morning paper. “Some people are getting it earlier than we used to deliver,” Waters said, with the postal deliveries arriving mostly between 10 a.m. and 5 p.m. “I could see how it’s more difficult for a morning newspaper,” he said. “Look, the older generation is phasing out. We need to respect them, they’re the ones that got us here, they’re the legacy readers that really support newspaper journalism. But with the new models and workloads, it just works for us.
The Enormous Media Company You’ve Never Heard O
The name of that organization? Complexly.
What is Complexly? Complexly is an educational media company run by the brothers Hank and John Green. “Wait a second, Simon,” you might say. “I’ve actually heard of Hank and John Green. I follow them on social media, have heard interviews with them, and even read one of their novels. How can you say that they aren’t covered by the mainstream press?”
Well, sure. These two brothers do get featured a lot in the media, but it’s mostly for the content that they personally create, either through their Vlogbrothers YouTube channel, their social media accounts, the podcasts they host, or the books they write. Articles that reference this content almost never mention that the two brothers are also media moguls that oversee a pretty vast publishing empire. Do a search for “Complexly” on Google News, and you’ll find very few results, almost all of which merely mention the company in passing
But Complexly is much, much bigger than just the Green brothers. Its about page lists 51 full-time employees, most of whom work in some form of video production. And if you include Hank and John’s channels in the mix, the company operates around 22 separate verticals, with the most emphasis placed on YouTube as the primary form of distribution. Here’s a small sampling of the channels to give you a sense of what they produce:
Crash Course Description: “At Crash Course, we believe that high quality educational videos should be available to everyone for free! … The Crash Course team has produced more than 32 courses on a wide variety of subjects, including organic chemistry, literature, world history, biology, philosophy, theater, ecology, and many more!”
Daily Clips is a culmination of various articles from an array of news sources on topics spanning from news to tech
