ABSTRACT
Local news organisations serve vital roles in their communities, holding local institutions accountable, enabling active citizenship, and representing communities to themselves and to the outside world. As local news organisations continue to face economic challenges, publishers have pursued strategies for centralising and streamlining editorial, advertising, and production processes across their newsrooms. The rise of platforms has led many national and regional news organisations to use digital tools to further diversify their business models in the form of verticals, native advertising and branded content, in-house marketing, e-commerce, and events. An aspect of digital business models that has become particularly important in the local media sector is paid content models. The interviewees included staff members at multiple levels of the newspapers, including editors responsible for developing and implementing their organisations’ editorial and digital strategies, section editors, reporters, business staff members, and executives involved with developing editorial, production, and commercial strategies at the company level.
