The Pulp was founded in 2023 by two long-time Missoula journalists determined to make lemonade from the loss of their growing city’s beloved alt-weekly.
After hatching the idea of a new independent online news outlet for Missoulans, founders Matthew Frank and Erika Fredrickson applied to be part of a cohort of early-stage community news startups for Indiegraf’s inaugural News Startup Fund, which supports entrepreneurs to build sustainable media businesses.
Once accepted, The Pulp’s co-founders quickly got to work pitching their vision to local donors to secure runway funding for their launch.
Today, the outlet delivers original reporting to 7,000 newsletter subscribers — about 1,000 of whom support the outlet financially.
These successes were celebrated last year at the Independent News Sustainability Summit in Chicago, where The Pulp won LION Publishers’ New Business of the Year for exhibiting in its early stages “a clearly defined commitment to working toward achieving sustainability through operational resilience, financial health, and journalistic impact.”
This year, the publication was also a division finalist for the Next Challenge 2025 Future of Local Journalism Award.
“As a startup founder, we vacillate between being either elated or panicked — there’s not much in between,” said Frank. “In terms of the general response from the community, we’re elated.”
Strong Start: Early Funding Driven by Clear Vision and Audience
The LION Publishers award specifically recognized The Pulp’s launch strategy. From the start, they knew they had to welcome in key community players and supporters to make it happen.
In August 2023, Frank and Fredrickson hosted a fundraising event and pitched The Pulp to a group of prospective donors. With commitments from 14 individuals pledging $12,000 over the first year alongside Indiegraf’s support, they created a landing page and began growing a list of subscribers — generating 1,000 in less than a week
It was a strategy born out of a realistic understanding of what it would cost to deliver the quality, in-depth journalism the two had become known for over their combined 15 years of reporting and editing at the Missoula Independent.
“We knew that we just had to go all in. We had to quit our jobs and work our butts off. We couldn’t imagine making it work while still freelancing and trying to pay the mortgage,” Frank recalls.
The alt-weekly had closed abruptly in 2018, so when they launched The Pulp almost exactly five years later — with a familiar voice and fresh new branding alongside pulpy puns — it was a “big deal,” Frank said. “A lot of folks were excited, and so we leveraged that.”
Immediately after launching in September 2023, a two-week fundraiser called the Big Squeeze helped raise $40,000 to build their pool of freelance reporters.
“I think we can attribute that largely to our history and folks knowing us,” Frank said.
“The Pulp is the journalistic heir of the Missoula Independent,” he acknowledges. While they don’t want to lean too much into that nostalgia, it has “helped us communicate to Missoula the kind of journalism that we like to do in terms of longer-form stuff, investigative stuff, covering arts and culture.”
This reputation has also helped bring in local writers. “There’s just a ton of talent here, and so we’ve been able to survive with freelancers so far,” Frank said, adding that their goal is to hire several full-time reporters.
The Pulp’s Growth Journey, Backed by Indiegraf
Going All In on Reader Revenue
From the start, The Pulp knew it would need to continue to lean on its community to fund the journalism with Indiegraf providing integral support with audience revenue and technology.
“In general, having a team behind us providing and supporting our website and newsletter tools — that’s been big, ” Frank said. “There’s a certain sophistication around newsletter campaigns and email marketing and earning revenue from readers that we’re really just beginning to understand.”
Indiegraf Experts has a team of audience, ads, and revenue specialists. They support publications with reader segmentation and other strategies. One of these strategies is NewsMatch, which boosts revenue campaigns at the end of the year.
In addition to NewsMatch, The Pulp participates in a local community-wide fundraiser called Missoula Gives in May, which brought in 97 donors in 2025.
Launching Additional Revenue Streams
Last summer, The Pulp saw membership plateauing. To see if merch would help entice new memberships, they launched a Summer Juice Boost promotion with a T-shirt giveaway.
Indiegraf supported the publication with tracking contributions and their referral source. The campaign converted 65 supporters and raised over $5,000.
“We had this need. We had to figure out how to get membership back on track, and [Indiegraf] were able to be flexible and apply what usually is just like a digital thing to something that’s more tangible.”
To create even more in-person and tangible opportunities to connect with their audience, The Pulp hosted a variety show, called The Pulp Live & In Color, in October 2024 to celebrate its first birthday — complete with live commercials for some of their business supporters.
“It was our first time doing it, so there’s a lot of room for growth, but I think it’s a really promising thing, so we’re planning on doing that again this October, and making it bigger and cooler and even weirder.”
Part of the investment is in the skillset of entrepreneurship. Frank was recently accepted into the Craig Newmark Graduate School of Journalism at CUNY’s first business bootcamp cohort for non-profit news.
“I came into this with very little experience in business, I didn’t even really use spreadsheets much. And now I’m just embracing the business side in every way and I really love it,” Frank said. “It’s really been us and our board, and me seeking out these opportunities just to get better at it.”
For example, a new revenue stream in the works is called Newsroom Partners, a local business membership program inspired by Richland Source.
“We know a lot of local businesses who really appreciate what we’re doing, and they want to support us,” Frank said. “They don’t all need ads on a website for the page views. They just want to be associated with this effort. And so that’s sort of an approach that we feel fits Missoula.”
The Pulp has largely developed its own assets and positioning for this unique membership program, but Indiegraf has been integral in the infrastructure required to bring it online.
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.
