Column: The Year I Built a Local News Outlet in My Hometown

Reflecting on eight months of The Bentonville Bulletin

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It’s been about eight months since I launched The Bentonville Bulletin as an ambitious side hustle. 

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I wanted to keep my day job here at Indiegraf as Partnerships Manager while also addressing the utter lack of news in my hometown. 

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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? 

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With 133 articles published, a small but growing number of advertisers, and more than 10,000 email subscribers, I’m confident we’ve succeeded. 

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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.

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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. 

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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. 

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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.

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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.

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With that in mind, I’m actively fundraising to expand our reporting team with one additional, well-paid reporting hire sometime this year.

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Read more: 10 fundraising tips and strategies news publishers can borrow from Nonprofits (with examples!)

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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.