Running a local newsletter solo has 3 main components: audience, content, and revenue. Nothing happens without content so. . .

Today’s big idea is how to structure your local newsletter emails.

Formulas, systems, checklists. . . Whatever word you use, they make things easier. And we like easier. Especially because local newsletters are a “fresh produce” business. It’s not like software where you write a bunch of code then all you have to do is sell it and support customers.

You have to produce a new product every time you publish. That’s a grind. Systems make it suck less.

I aim to greet readers with a laugh. Or at least one of those slight exhales people do at kinda-funny-but-not-too-funny Internet jokes. Sometimes we use it to apologize for and correct mistakes. Rarely, we use it for announcements.

We also tease three stories from the rest of the newsletter, write our author bylines, and host a logo for that day’s headline sponsor.

Important: We very very very rarely include links in the intro. I don’t want people clicking away as soon as they open the newsletter.

Think of this like the front page of a newspaper. The stories don’t all fit into any particular category, but they’re important. The only difference for us is that they don’t continue somewhere else. The whole story is right there in The Digest.

Regular features here include:

🙋‍♂️ How much should I write for each story? That’s up to you. Like I said, we go a bit deeper than an inch – maybe 4–5 sentences. Other newsletters just do one sentence. I like both. But there’s more opportunity for personality and value (and thus differentiation from AI-powered newsletters) when going deeper.

This is where we cover all things business. When something is opening, closing, moving, expanding, or selling, it’s here. It’s also where we write about major commercial real estate transactions and the local economy.

Pro tip: When writing about new restaurants, always include a picture of the menu rather than a link to the restaurant’s website. People always want to see the menu, but you don’t want to give them a reason to click out of your newsletter unless you have to.

This is our in-newsletter events calendar. I changed it up recently. We used to write full paragraphs about just a few events. Now we’re including more events and writing less about each. We still do full write-ups (100+ words), but usually only when events are announced.

This is for boring government stuff. What’s the city/county council up to? What about the Board of Education? What do I need to know for the upcoming local elections? That’s all here.

I tried to remove this once and readers rioted. Give it local flair by adding relevant info for your area. Since Annapolis is a sailing/boating town I added wind in knots and water temp.

This is a big deal. We list it for every venue we can find whether it’s a dedicated music venue, bar/restaurant, public park, or even a weekly raft up with a live band. If there’s too much to fit in a newsletter, build a dedicated website calendar and link to it in the newsletter. This is probably a good thing to build regardless.

We don’t cover a lot of sports news. We always do county or state championships for local high schools but we don’t have pro teams. Sometimes we do college sports but they aren’t a huge deal in our town.

To be honest, sports is my first choice for a niche newsletter outside of the general newsletter. In Annapolis, that would mean a high school sports newsletter and a Navy sports newsletter. High school sports would require some legwork because there’s probably not enough content to aggregate but there are two advantages it will almost certainly have:

We recently got a semi-pro soccer team and the town’s fallen in love with them. We hold 9 of the top 10 attendance records for our previous league and have already been promoted (where we already broke the attendance record). We wouldn’t cover them as extensively if the team wasn’t so popular. To be honest, this is another niche newsletter we could start but the season is only 3 months.

That’s we’ve done every day for 3 years and 3 times a week for the 2 years before that. Having a formula keeps me sane. I can’t imagine coming up with a brand new newsletter 250 weeks in a row. But I can easily come up with content 5 days a week if I have a mold to fit it in.

Feel free to steal my sections. I didn’t invent them so they’re not even really mine. You can view Naptown Scoop’s archive at any time without subscribing at naptownscoop.beehiiv.com.

Moving on.

Nexstar wants to buy Tegna for $6.2 billion. The deal is subject to regulatory approval but if it fails, Nexstar has to pay Tegna about $120 million. Why this matters for local newsletters: Tegna is heavily invested in the nationwide local newsletter company 6AM City. I think it’s likely that Tegna acquires 6AM at some point. Something they could easily do if an extra $120 million fell into its lap.