If you’re a journalist who has seen your local journalism career upended or you’re worried about your job, we want to help! We passionately believe in local journalism and my personal story is over two decades of helping people publish on the web.
Let’s plant the seeds of independent news in your community
I’m concerned about the loss and/or retreat of local news providers and there is no doubt in my mind that independents (of which there is a thriving sector) are the future. That’s where you come in. Let’s plant the seeds of independent news in your community, whether geographic or topical, and grow the number of sustainable publishers showing the “big boys” how it should be done.
I’ve put together a low-cost package to help you get started online. It’s built on WordPress, which powers 43% of the web1, as well as some of the biggest publishers online2. It uses the excellent Newspack package which is built specifically for small to medium independent news publishers by the excellent team behind WordPress.com.
News Spring “SEED”
- WordPress with Newspack
- Managed, scalable and secure hosting
- Custom domain name
- Support from WordPress and indie news publishing experts
- Freedom to migrate away any time – you own your audience, not us!
- Unlimited newsletters3
- Unlimited subscription prompts
- Stellar analytics4
- Highly-customisable theme
- Unlimited users
- Implement ads at no extra cost and choose from AdSense or direct-sold through Broadstreet5 or Google Ad Manager
£30/month
billed annually
Want more?
Build reader revenue by seeking donations and/or selling content subscriptions with our add-ons.
+Donations
- Unlimited donors
- Built-in donation prompt
- Payments through Stripe for trust and security
+£10/month
billed annually
+Subscriptions
- Unlimited members
- Sell premium access
- Payments through Stripe for trust and security
+£20/month
billed annually
Need more information? Get in touch now.
Why News Spring?
We believe that independent media is the future and the correct response to years of cutbacks by large regional publishers. We also believe publishers should own their audience, not platforms. That’s why our platform is built on open source software and 3rd party tools that keep you in control. You can migrate away at any time and find any number of other contractors to help manage your site.
What will keep you with us is our experience – News Spring was founded by Philip John, a WordPress engineer for 18 years and an independent news publisher for 14 years who has worked with close to 100 news organisations over his career, from small one-person operations to the biggest publishers in the world. This wealth of experience and passion for local journalism is what distinguishes News Spring from other providers.
News Spring doesn’t just give you the tech – we give you tech built for news publishers and we help you get the most out of it to build a thriving, sustainable, independent news outlet.
Footnotes
- W3 Techs CMS usage stats ↩︎
- High-profile news publishers using WordPress include The Sun, Fortune, The New Yorker, Vogue, Time Magazine ↩︎
- Newsletters relies on 3rd party services. We recommend Mailchimp which starts at FREE for up to 1,000 sends per month. ↩︎
- Google Analytics measurement is required to get the full benefit of the built-in analytics ↩︎
- Broadstreet is a third party managed service that charges a management free ↩︎
