Newsletters as News Products: A Guide for Local Newsrooms

By Josh Stearns

This guide was created based on a workshop I gave to graduate students at the Tow-Knight Center for Entrepreneurial Journalism at the City University of New York. It is the culmination of a lot of research and my own experience with email outreach, online advocacy, and fundraising, as well as my work on the Local Fix, a weekly newsletter on tips and tools for local journalists.

Many of the ideas here are not original and are drawn from best practices researched and documented by others. A reading list is included at the end of this guide, but I’m particularly grateful for the work of Charlotte Fagerlund, whose report “Back to the Future — Email Newsletters as a Digital Channel for Journalism” is an absolute must read.