There’s a contradiction in fast-growing North American cities.
At a time when small- and mid-sized urban centers are growing rapidly, residents are also feeling increasingly disconnected and isolated.
“It’s because the local information ecosystem is broken,” says Chris Sopher, CEO and founder of WhereBy.Us, the five city-strong local news media company that launched in Miami with The New Tropic in 2015. “It’s about a lack of connective tissue between residents, city movements and issues that bind them to a place,” he says.
Sopher saw a solution with The New Tropic, a daily morning newsletter featuring vital, curated local news to connect Miami’s readers. He believed residents wanted opinionated, earnest takes on local stories as an antidote to both the “objectivity disease” of corporate daily media and “cynical negativity” of the alternative press.
He was right. With a business model initially focused on display ads, sponsored content and sponsored events, The New Tropic hit profitability by the end of its first year. In 2018, the company grossed $1 million nationally.
This article originally appeared on the Viafoura blog.
Scale with Local Authenticity
“We then decided to try this in another place to figure out whether the model we built is portable,” Sopher says. America’s fastest-growing big city seemed like an on-brand expansion, so WhereBy.Us looked west to Seattle and launched The Evergrey in 2017. Last year, the company launched in Portland, Oregon, and Orlando and then purchased Pittsburgh’s The Incline. Today, the WhereBy.Us team of 30 deliver local news to more than 75,000 daily newsletter subscribers with average open rates ranging from 30% to 35% and reach 2 million people monthly across its platforms, Sopher says. WhereBy.Us has its sights set on owning the local market largely discarded in the media consolidation race for massive scale. One of the toughest challenges with delivering quality local media is scaling while staying true and relevant to locals. “We’ve spent a lot of energy on what it takes to scale while keeping local authenticity,” says Sopher. “We’ve unlocked how to solve that through our model and our technology.”“We’ve spent a lot of energy on what it takes to scale while keeping local authenticity.” Chris Sopher – Founder, WhereBy.UsPart of WhereBy.Us’ success is based on a platform that, in addition to making content production streamlined, enables a local team to automate both reader and advertiser services. Currently, newsletter ads are sold, uploaded and renewed across the network in a standardized way. Clients can also target WhereBy.Us readers in each city based on stories shared or events attended. One coming innovation is an automated newsletter subscriber referral program that rewards users for urging others to sign up. The uniform backend support means local site operators are empowered with the tools, playbooks and packaging focused on straightforward on-boarding of new local city media brands. “This gives WhereBy.Us sites the freedom to focus on community engagement while we take care of the newsletters, advertising and data. This lets smaller teams operate without the massive overhead usually associated with building revenue infrastructure,” says Sopher.
