• by Sara Guaglione , August 5, 2019

Over a year after the launch of its Local News Subscriptions Accelerator, Facebook says the projects funded through the program “resulted in tens of thousands of new digital subscriptions and hundreds of thousands of new email newsletter subscribers” for the 14 participating metro newspapers, according to a blog post from Facebook.

It led to an estimated $5 million in additional value for publishers, “from their growth in paid subscriptions and newsletters from their work in the Accelerator.”

Half the publishers in the program saw gains of more than 50,000 new subscribers — and publishers could expect 5% to 10% of email subscribers to convert to paid subscribers, claims Facebook.

The Local News Subscriptions Accelerator comes out of the Facebook Journalism Project, which launched in 2017. The social-media platform says its goal for the Journalism Project is to collaborate directly with the news industry and local news organizations to offer resources to journalists.

The Local News Accelerator program brought together metro news organizations to participate in workshops. Grant funding administered by the Lenfest Institute for Journalism was provided to support the experimentation of new initiatives, all with the aim of increasing digital subscriptions. 

The San Francisco Chronicle, for example, had an “ultra sale” last winter and gained over 5,000 new subscribers — its best digital subscription initiative to date. 

Syracuse.com increased its newsletter subscriptions by 30,000 (275%).

The Philadelphia Inquirer established “a cross-functional agile team from marketing, circulation and data/analytics" to help it build out digital subscriptions efforts. The Seattle Times worked on understanding and acting upon audience characteristics that indicate which readers are most likely to subscribe.

This Accelerator is one of a few Facebook is running to work with newsrooms around the country.

The newspapers participating in this program include The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, The Boston Globe, Chicago Tribune, The Dallas Morning News, The Denver Post, The Miami Herald, The Minneapolis Star Tribune, The Omaha World-Herald, The Philadelphia Inquirer, The Seattle Times, The San Francisco Chronicle, The Tennessean and Newsday.

The local news industry has shrunk dramatically over the years and is in need of innovation. 

Nearly 1,800 newspapers closed between 2004 and 2018, leaving 200 counties with no local newspaper and about half the counties in the country with just one, according to a University of North Carolina study.