For 14 years I’ve been volunteering for a local independent news publisher in my community. It’s grown from a simple blog to the only news publisher in the area with over 100,000 visitors every month. I’m incredibly proud of what the team and I have achieved with Lichfield Live and the passion it’s given me for journalism.
In those same 14 years I’ve worked professionally with numerous publishers, from the biggest in the world to one-person operations covering small localised communities and everything in-between. What started as a hobby all those years ago grew into a passion, sitting well alongside my passion for building great experiences on the web as a senior/lead WordPress engineer.
After supporting and migrating some of the biggest publishing names in the web at VIP, I became one of the founding members of Newspack – first helping to build the software, then managing clients and launches. Since then I’ve launched a further two sites built on Newspack (which is available to self-host) in my role at leading WordPress agency, XWP.
Now I’m focusing those two passions and my experience into News Spring.
To start with, News Spring is a simple blog where I’ll share thoughts, lessons, tips, news and anything else that might be helpful for small- to medium-sized independent news publishers. It’s these indies that I get most excited about – those that have a real commitment to the community they serve.
Here I’ll talk about visitor acquisition, visitor engagement, revenue generation, and the tech that can power it all.
So if you’re an independent news publisher – local or otherwise – and you are interested in how to better find and serve your community sustainability, subscribe below and let’s continue the journey together.
