Introducing Lookout Growth
The numbers are stark – and getting worse. The U.S. has seen a dramatic decline in trustworthy local news over more than 15 years. Since 2005, the U.S. has lost more than one-third of its newspapers, totaling over 3,300 closures. And more than two-thirds of journalists’ jobs have been lost over a similar time period.
We at Lookout are proud to be countering that trend and helping to spark a new one. We don’t complain about hedge fund destruction of local news. We replace them.
In Santa Cruz, our now four-year news organization is thriving and growing, in our impact, newsroom size, membership and reading audience. Our models – business, community and journalism – are working, with the 2024 Pulitzer Prize for Breaking News award certifying our coverage excellence and community-centric mission.
Our April 2025 launch of Lookout Eugene-Springfield further demonstrates the strength and replicability of our models. We are quickly earning the trust – as well as fast membership and advertising growth – of that community, all built on our learned best practices and singular, highly effective tech stack.
Now, we take the next step forward announcing Lookout Growth.
Growth, not simply sustainability, has to be the priority as we revive local news in the U.S. and beyond.
Lookout Growth encompasses two parts, both core to our original mission.
Ken Doctor, Lookout CEO & Founder
Lookout expansion
We’ve already said we’re planning to serve three additional communities, as we plan a still-larger rollout beyond those. Those plans now accelerate as we aim to meet the moment of increasing local news devastation across the county.
We’re surveying for Lookout communities that match our model. These are communities with a strong civic leadership, and a leadership that values the fundamental community-bettering role of trustworthy, non-partisan local news in a city’s life and finds it currently lacking. Lookout’s public benefit model works best in and for communities that can work with us to raise the capital required for successful, large-scale launch.
We are in discussion with several communities and welcome inquiries as well. Please reach out to us growth@lookoutlocal.com
LOOKout advisory
Lookout’s models have been honed over five years of planning and launch. We know that it is the synergistic combination of journalism, business, community and school models that have led to our success. We have shared our learnings widely and are glad to be participating in the Knight Foundation Growth Challenge, along with other like-minded mission- and business-driven local news publishers.
Now we take a next step with Lookout Advisory. We’ve distilled our learnings in each key area of our business, and in the second half of 2025, we will begin offering consulting services to both existing and planned news operations.
We’ll design engagements around organizations’ specific needs, focusing on these key areas:
- Subscription/Membership Revenue Models: Focus on integrated membership/messaging, customer care, stewardship, engagement and retention for subscription/membership. Hybrid access strategies that both boost membership revenue and increase readership among non-members.
- Advertising/Marketing Partners Revenue Model: Focus on long-term customer satisfaction and effectiveness, utilizing multiple, flexible ad types and channels, treating customers as “marketing partners.”
- Cost Effectiveness: Smart outsourcing of non-journalism, non-sales, non-community building “back office”/tech and business operations to increase business efficiency, reduce costs, leverage smart tools and create faster time to market.
- Funding: Effective community-based fundraising, both in current and new markets.
- Integrated Tech Stack Synergies: Based on the Wordpress/Newspack CMS, the value of building a low-cost, high-efficiency, increasingly integrated tech stack that synergies audience, reader revenue and advertising.
- Community Building: Nonprofit Civic Partners programs, community event hosting, co-sponsoring issue forums and more. Linking community engagement to revenue-building lines of business.
- Local news in the classroom: Adapting Lookout in the Classroom initiatives, both with media literacy-building and revenue-enhancing goals.
- Local news replacement: Building new trusted local news organizations that can quickly become the go-to source for local news in their communities. Adapting news and information playbooks for engagement success and social/political impact. Smart use of AI to build reader-loving products at low cost and high effectiveness. Increase time-to-market ramp.
Please reach out to us growth@lookoutlocal.com
