Warren St. John

For many communities, the math doesn’t work anymore for ad-supported local news. Roughly 1,800 local papers closed between 2004 and 2018, replaced by only 400 online-only sites, according to a UNC study. “The news desert issue is real,” said Patch President Warren St. John. For Patch, the dearth of local content presents an opportunity to […]

The rise of digital advertising has been tough on local news. Not only have legacy operations, like local newspapers, struggled to survive in the era of Craigslist, Google and Facebook, digital ones haven’t found it easy to gain a perch. Most recently, the owner of Gothamist and DNAinfo shut down the sites in early November […]