Hi, it’s Keith Pepper, the publisher of Rough Draft. Thanks for letting me drop into your inbox on this Sunday. The goal of my periodic newsletter is to give you glimpses into the local news business and update you on how things are going at Rough Draft.
🥂 March 3 was the fifth anniversary of the launch of the Rough Draft newsletter. What began as a three-times-a-week email we sent to 100 friends and family has grown into a portfolio of more than 20 newsletters and over 1.2 million email sends a month.
😟 If you follow the media business (not something for the faint of heart), it won’t be news to you that across the country, local newspapers continue to disappear. The latest “State of Local News” report from Northwestern’s Medill School of Journalism found that more than 200 U.S. counties qualify as “news deserts.” Roughly 50 million Americans rely on a single source of local news.
🙈 For those who do have options, a recent Pew study, “Americans’ Complicated Relationship With News,” found that about half of us say we feel worn out by an overload of information, which has led, understandably, to news avoidance.
🤯 The split-screen of watching “Tehran” on Apple TV+ and the actual war in Iran on CNN had me so stressed out last week that I turned on “Inside the Mind of a Dog” on Netflix and got a few hours of calm.
Where does Rough Draft fit in?
🌞 From the jump, one of the goals of Rough Draft has been to give people a daily digest of the news in a way that doesn’t overwhelm, but allows you to sound interesting at lunch. Early on, a reader told me that our newsletter “made it safe to read the news again,” and many of you continue to tell me that our morning email is how you start your day.
We aim to give you a healthy balance between the news you need, like local government, public safety, and education, and the stories you crave, such as food, arts, and real estate.
🤝 Newsletters are essential to building a sustainable news organization that can compete for readers, journalists, and advertisers in today’s media landscape. They give us a one-to-one relationship with our audience that makes us less reliant on the whims of the changing algorithms of search and social media.
Enhancing our digital presence has helped us grow our reach beyond the three-decade geographic footprint of our print newspapers, but print remains the foundation that makes all of it possible.
An evolving model
🆕 March has also been a month of milestones. We launched coverage of Norcross, our first foray into Gwinnett County, and consolidated most of our print issues under the Rough Draft brand, giving us more flexibility to scale to new markets. Here’s what I wrote about these changes on LinkedIn.
How you can get involved
😟 Another finding from the Pew research stood out to me: only about 8% of Americans believe people have a responsibility to pay for news.
Local journalism, however, has always depended on community engagement from readers and advertisers, and here are some ways you can support what we do:
- Support our advertisers. When you find your dream home or discover a new restaurant, jeweler, event, or exhibit, let them know you saw their ad in Rough Draft.
- Become an advertiser. If your company wants to connect with engaged, affluent, and influential consumers, we should talk.
- Subscribe to our newsletters. If you’re getting this, you subscribe to at least one newsletter, but you might find another one that interests you. They are all free!
- Become a member. All of our content is free, but we have opportunities for you to support our journalism via our membership page. Members get cool swag, and we are working on introducing exclusive events later this year.
📧 Thank you again for reading Rough Draft. Please let me know what you think by emailing me directly.
Happy St. Patrick’s Day!
Keith