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10/11/2018

Richland Source in Ohio among local news organizations taking part in Facebook’s membership accelerator

From Niemam Lab

After leading a cohort of metropolitan newspapers through a subscriptions accelerator this year, Facebook is now kicking off its next round, focused this time on membership in nonprofit and digital-only local news organizations.

The membership accelerator, now one of three different threads in Facebook’s olive-branch programming for local news, started with an in-person gathering in Austin late last month and continues for three months. Facebook extended the subscriptions accelerator, piloted with 14 newsrooms beginning in February, throughout the rest of 2018 and is transitioning it to a retention focus in 2019.

The programming is led by former Texas Tribune publisher/New York Times digital strategy executive/now independent media consultant Tim Griggs (he spoke with us about the training earlier this year) and a group of industry coaches and experts including the Christian Science Monitor’s David Grant and Mother Jones’ Brian Hiatt. Participants receive grant funding, attend regular webinars, and gather two more times in person over the next three months.

The accelerators’ participants were selected by Facebook rather than via an external application process, with input from the Lenfest Institute, the Local Media Consortium, the Local Media Association, and the News Media Alliance for the subscription side; the Institute for Nonprofit News, Local Independent Online News (LION) Publishers, and the News Revenue Hub for the membership one.

Here’s the full list of the 17 membership accelerator participants; you can find much more about nearly all of them in the Nieman Lab archives:

  • Richland Source, a Mansfield, Ohio publication conceived by the CEO of a local printer and copier supplier in 2013, which has primarily relied on advertising revenue in the past

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