Helping news entrepreneurs and their communities flourish everywhere

💪🏽 Tiny News founders take on the big task of stewarding community newspapers

By Amy L. Kovac-Ashley

We recently published two stories about Tiny News Collective women entrepreneurs who are doing something that, on the surface, might seem unlikely: acquiring newspapers. At a moment when much of the conversation around local news is focused on closures, cuts and uncertainty, these stories offer a different perspective. They show what happens when small, independent news organizations begin thinking not just about launching new outlets, but also about becoming the next stewards of long-standing community institutions.

What makes these stories especially noteworthy is that the people exploring these acquisitions are not large media companies or investment groups. They are tiny newsroom leaders who started by listening to their communities, building trust and serving local information needs. Now, entrepreneurs like Amy Bushatz at Mat-Su Sentinel and Kari Mar at La Conner Community News are asking bigger questions: What should local news look like today? Which parts of a legacy newspaper still matter? What do communities actually want preserved, and what needs to evolve?

In Kari's case, after buying two newspapers (and three magazines) in Northwest Washington state, the answer is still unfolding. Through her work with the two new newspaper properties, she's finding that different communities present different needs. In one, there is strong support for maintaining a newspaper presence. In the other, she's still listening, gathering information and determining what role local news should play going forward. Her experience highlights an important reality: Acquiring a newspaper is not the goal itself. The goal is understanding whether that acquisition helps meet a community need.

Amy's path illustrates another side of the equation. When purchasing a local newspaper, the Frontiersman, earlier this month she chose not to take on the print operation or printing press. Instead, the acquisition opened the door to rethinking coverage and services that had previously been split between organizations. Rather than simply preserving what existed, she's considering how to combine strengths, expand into new topic areas and potentially add new reporting capacity, including sports coverage. The acquisition became less about maintaining a legacy product and more about creating a stronger local news organization for the future.

Lessons learned in the acquisitions 

Some key lessons these entrepreneurs have learned so far:

• Conduct listening work before making major decisions about a newspaper's future.
• Every community has different expectations for local news products.
• You don't have to preserve every aspect of a legacy operation to preserve its value.
• Acquisitions can create opportunities to expand coverage and serve audiences in new ways.
• Succession planning is becoming one of the most important challenges facing local newspapers.
• Small, independent newsrooms may be uniquely positioned to provide solutions because of their local relationships and flexibility.

Taken together, these stories point toward an emerging possibility for local news. Across the country, many community newspapers face succession challenges as longtime owners look toward retirement. Increasingly, small independent newsrooms may be among the organizations best positioned to step into that role — because they are already deeply connected to the communities they serve. They approach ownership through community engagement, listening work and a willingness to reshape products around current needs rather than past assumptions.

What began as small local news startups have grown, through persistence and hard work, into organizations capable of imagining entirely new futures for local news products. At Tiny News Collective, that's one reason these stories matter so much. We not only want to document how Amy and Kari are navigating these acquisitions; we're interested in what their experiences might teach the many other small news organizations that could blend the old with the new and become the next generation of community news and information stewards.

🗣️ TNC Around Town: Operations Director Erica Perel will be in Boulder for Constructing for Community and Connection July 7-8.

Executive Director Amy L. Kovac-Ashley will be in Minneapolis for SRCCON July 8-9, where she will co-facilitate a session called "Let's Talk About Values."

Collective Fellow Luisa Suarez will be in New Orleans for the NAHJ conference July 22-25 and wants to meet up with members and others in attendance who want to learn more about Tiny News Collective. Please reach out to her here.

TNC News

Diane Sylvester joins Tiny News as acting membership director

Tiny News Collective is delighted to welcome Diane Sylvester as its acting membership director, bringing to the role more than three decades of experience as a journalist, editor, newsroom leader and consultant. Throughout her career, Diane has centered equity in her work, helping news organizations build sustainable systems, strengthen community connections and develop strategies that support both their missions and their teams.

Over the past decade, Diane has worked alongside diverse, community-centered newsrooms, coaching founders and leaders as they navigated growth and change. She has worked directly with several Tiny News members through the Tiny Vitals metrics program. She has also supported newsrooms such as Report for the World, Type Investigations and the New York Amsterdam News, helping to develop revenue strategies, deepen community engagement and strengthen organizational capacity. Her experience makes her uniquely positioned to support TNC’s growing network of independent local newsrooms.

Read the whole story here.

5 Questions with Lehigh Daily’s Jai Smith

For our latest “5 Questions with” feature, we checked in with Jai Smith, founder of Lehigh Daily, a digital news site with a strong social media presence covering Lehigh Valley, Pennsylvania. Unhappy with the local news coverage in his community, Jai used his experience as a web developer to build the Lehigh Daily website. With a focus on social media reporting, each of his publication’s social media pages has amassed more than 30,000 followers and thousands of views. Now, Jai is celebrating the Lehigh Daily’s second birthday, reflecting on his growth and what he hopes to build in the future.

“My main goals this year are to be able to break even and sustain one full-time hire,” Jai said. “That would be a win for me as a very small newsroom, and it would mean one more full-time reporter in the area that we don't have right now. That way we are the Lehigh Daily — truly — and not the Lehigh ‘every once when we can.’ The ‘golden horizon’ would be to become a next-gen, modern media company, where we have news — and we do great news — and we're serving our community.”

Read the whole story here.

Sign up for an AMA to learn about Tiny News

Want to learn more about Tiny News Collective? You’ll have a chance in two weeks when our executive director Amy Kovac-Ashley will run an “Ask Me Anything” (AMA) session on July 14 at 4 p.m. ET. She’ll walk through what membership actually looks like, who it’s for and how founders are using TNC to build community-rooted newsrooms. Whether you’re pre-launch, early stage or just exploring your options, this is a chance to hear directly from our team and get honest answers. Register here!

Founder Shoutouts

Launches, birthdays and awards 🏆

🌟 Eden Prairie Local News (EPLN) was honored with eight awards from the Minnesota Society of Professional Journalists, including five first-place awards. EPLN was also named as a finalist for the 2026 Nonprofit News Awards, or INNYs, in the visual journalism category.

🌧️ Capital Weather launched as an independent publication again. It’s been the D.C. region’s go-to source for weather for more than two decades, first as an independent website in 2004, then as a part of The Washington Post in 2008. “Our audience doesn’t just consume the forecast; they share photos, observations and a love of the skies,” the publication says in its About page.

🇵🇷 The Latino Newsletter plans to launch a new podcast, American Colony, a bilingual series premiering on July 4. It will explore how 128 years of colonialism shape the lives of Puerto Ricans, with eight weekly episodes in English and Spanish.

🎊 Autonomy News celebrated its first birthday, with co-founders Garnet Henderson and Susan Rinkunas writing that, “In our first year we’ve stayed true to our mission — especially the idea that accountability reporting is necessary, even when it means being critical of organizations that do important work.”

🎂 Mat-Su Sentinel celebrated its second birthday with its new brick-and-mortar office and the purchase of the Frontiersman, a legacy newspaper in town.

🦾 Beaufort Journalism was accepted into the Google News Initiative's AI Sustainability Lab hosted by Blue Engine Collaborative.

Landmark moments ✨

📹 505omatic launched a series of TikTok/Reels Civic Media Workshops at the Santa Fe Library in June and July (see graphic above). These free workshops are for young folks aged 12 to 24 and are supported by Santa Fe’s Arts & Culture Division and the Friends of the Santa Fe Public Library. 

🗳️ The 51st produced a comprehensive voter guide for municipal elections in D.C., which was viewed by more than 50,000 people. Plus, The 51st’s Sam Delgado was on local TV station NBC4 Washington to discuss the results of a couple D.C. Council races.

🍷 Newsberg produced its first Logoff event with food, drinks, coloring books, puzzles and games. Most importantly, the phones were off. They are considering locations for future Logoff events.

📸 Bottom Up created a new Instagram page focused on its local coverage of Boston. In just one week it amassed 1,000 followers and 150K views, and the governor of Massachusetts is one of its notable followers! 

Speaking up and speaking out 🗣️

🥂 Ravenous ate up the adulation this month, with a profile story in Poynter as well as hosting a panel on the state of food media at the James Beard Awards in Chicago. “To have some accountability and actually spotlight the folks that are doing good work and treating their people respectfully, that’s something that we have to do a better job of,” co-founder Ashok Selvam told Poynter.

🎙️ Tenderloin Voice co-founders Noah Arroyo and Laura Wenus were guests on KALW’s “Your Call” radio show discussing San Francisco’s proposed city budget that would cut services to the Tenderloin neighborhood. Plus, the pair were able to bring along a third guest, Curtis Bradford, a neighborhood resident and community organizer.

🎭 Laura Amico from Scene in Boston was a featured panelist on MASSCreative’s 2026 Creative Sector Summit on June 12. "Pitch Perfect: How We Get More Arts Policy Stories in the News" was a conversation about building stronger relationships between the creative sector and the journalists covering it.

💥 COYOTE Media Collective was featured in a recent Columbia Journalism Review piece about how the outlet is taking the ethos of the alternative press and filling a gap that the community identified.

Stories with impact 💥

⛽ Mendo Local published a story on a gas station operator — a known environmental violator — who had a new gas station approved by the Board of Supervisors. The in-depth report was lauded by one of the supervisors.

💰 Tucson Spotlight broke a big story (and a follow-up story) about how the University of Arizona was changing its endowment payouts, removing an independent check on how donor-restricted money is spent. The reporting was cited by Inside Higher Ed and in the local newspaper.

🔥 Kaheāwai Media launched a community-led wildfire-prevention toolkit. It was a collaboration between four partner organizations across two Hawaiian islands, with 100+ video clips, guides and other resources created by, with and for frontline organizers.

🍲 Harvey World Herald published a feature on Ford Heights, a municipality in the south suburbs of Chicago once regarded as one of the poorest in America. The village opened its first sit-down restaurant in 60 years. Locals are hoping its luck is finally turning around.

🎳 Richard Campbell wrote a column for Oxford Free Press, revisiting “Bowling Alone” and the phenomenon of less social and civic participation. “The problems that ‘Bowling Alone’ identified manifest in many communities with little access to local news, which often acts as a form of social and civic cohesion, providing reliable information, posting event notices, sharing communal stories and identifying problems that need fixing,” he wrote. 

Resources

Richart J. Margolis Award
The award is designed to help developing journalists make progress on non-fiction writing projects that reflect important social values. The selection committee judges applications on the quality of the writing samples and the relevance and potential impact of the proposed project. Submitted samples should all be non-fiction pieces that give a clear indication of the applicant's ability to write well and apply journalistic skills effectively. Apply by July 1.

Beat Academy: Midterm Prep from Poynter
During this free, 75-minute webinar on July 15, participants will learn alongside peers from across the country. Attendees will receive practical tip sheets, reporting resources and real-world strategies designed to help journalists cover the election with depth, accuracy and confidence.

Local News Reporting Grants from Pulitzer Center
You decide what underreported stories your community needs to engage with, and Pulitzer Center will support that reporting and champion it, including creating educational materials and organizing events to expand the reach of your stories and the conversation about them. The Center values data, investigative and accountability journalism projects that tackle systemic issues and hold to account powerful local figures. Applications accepted on a rolling basis.

Shackelford Shines Stipend
Up to 10 stipends each year support individuals in the journalism community. These stipends are aimed at helping professionals attend events and programs to enhance their skills as innovative editors, reporters, technologists or similar roles. Applications accepted on a rolling basis.

Thanks for reading the latest edition of the Big Blast from Tiny News. Be sure to follow us on social media to keep up with the latest from TNC and our amazing group of founders!

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The Big Blast Credits

Written by Amy L. Kovac-Ashley, with Mark Glaser
Edited by Amy L. Kovac-Ashley