As Indiegraf’s Entrepreneur-in-Residence, Sam Hoisington will be sharing his journey of building a community news outlet in this recurring column. Follow along as he shares the milestones and challenges of news entrepreneurship.
It’s been about eight months since I launched The Bentonville Bulletin as an ambitious side hustle.
I wanted to keep my day job here at Indiegraf as Partnerships Manager while also addressing the utter lack of news in my hometown.
My goal for the first year wasn’t to build a full newsroom — it was to create a proof of concept. I wanted something I could bring to advertisers, funders, and community leaders and say: Should we do this for real?
With 133 articles published, a small but growing number of advertisers, and more than 10,000 email subscribers, I’m confident we’ve succeeded.
We focus on good old-fashioned community journalism, covering new businesses, local government, and stuff like that. With one full-time editorial employee (hi, Heather!), we focus on what we can manage: three to five local news stories a week.
There are no big investigative projects planned for the immediate future. I always tell people before you can get to accountability, you have to start with awareness.
Before The Bentonville Bulletin was founded, there wasn’t a single paywall-free source where our city’s 60,000 residents could get timely updates on city council meetings.
In my opinion, just putting those back on the record is a meaningful achievement. But of course, we can’t stop there.
In 2025, we’re going to scale up and hire at least one more full-time reporter. I don’t have the money to do it yet, but I’m manifesting it. It’s going to happen.
Our audience research shows we’re on the right track with our coverage. We don’t need to change much — just do more of what’s working.
With that in mind, I’m actively fundraising to expand our reporting team with one additional, well-paid reporting hire sometime this year.
Read more: 10 fundraising tips and strategies news publishers can borrow from Nonprofits (with examples!)
Meaningful Milestones in 2024
- April 24: Sent our first email update to 67 people. It was all about a tree giveaway in Bentonville. Yay trees!
- May 16: Our Indiegraf website went live.
- July 8: Crossed 5,000 newsletter subscribers, buoyed by Meta lead gen campaigning.
- July 30: Hired a managing editor to handle day-to-day editorial responsibilities.
- Nov 12: Published our 100th article.
Indiegraf has helped over 120 publications across North America start, grow and manage an independent news business. Interested in joining Indiegraf’s growing network? We are happy to answer any questions!
