Adam Stone founded Examiner Media in 2007, the same year Gannett, the large newspaper chain, shuttered The Patent Trader, a 50-year-old paper in northern Westchester County. Last year, after pandemic-related lockdowns froze advertising and in-person events, Mr. Stone cut Examiner Media’s full-time editorial staff to two people from six. He also solicited funds for the first time and received more than $30,000, mainly in small donations.
“It felt like there was opportunity in reader revenue that we weren’t tapping,” he said.
Enter Substack. The venture capital-backed start-up is best known for persuading nationally popular writers to leave established publications and go into business for themselves with subscription newsletters. This spring, it announced Substack Local, a $1 million initiative to support local journalism with grants. In June, Examiner Media was selected as one of 12 winners, a group that included local news publishers in Australia, Britain, Nigeria, Romania and Taiwan.
“We wouldn’t consider ourselves a success if we just took famous people and made them famous in a new context,” said Hamish McKenzie, a Substack co-founder.
Another locally oriented news publication, The Charlotte Ledger, founded two years ago by the former Charlotte Observer reporter Tony Mecia, has found success on Substack, with 10,000 subscribers, around 2,200 of whom are paying, he said.
Article source: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/10/05/business/media/substack-subscribers-for-layoffs.html
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