Digital startup spurred by local newspaper's conflicts of interest failed, maybe because it saw ad sales as conflict

Sierra County, New Mexico
(Wikipedia map)

The rise and fall of the Sierra County Sun, a nonprofit news start-up in a New Mexico county of 12,000, illustrates the struggles many such news organizations must contend with, Anandita Bhalerao reports for Northwestern University's Medill Local News Initiative.

When magazine journalist and author Diana Tittle and her husband retired to Sierra County in 2012, there were two newspapers: the Sierra County Sentinel and the Sierra County Herald. The family-owned Herald closed in 2018, citing a decline in advertising. The Sentinel owner Frances Luna has also been a county and city commissioner, which Tittle considered a conflict of interest, Bhalerao reports.

The Herald's investigative reporter, Kathleen Sloan, who had left to work in Iowa and Florida before the Herald's closure, returned to launch the Sun as an online-only publication in October 2019. From the beginning, the Sun was overwhelmed and underfunded. Tittle, impressed with Sloan's reporting, stepped in as a reader and launched a "Save the Sun" fundraising campaign, Bhalerao reports. The paper survived and was reborn as a nonprofit. That wasn't the only change: Tittle, a journalism graduate of Northwestern, became the editor (as well as reporter and grant wrangler). And fellow retiree Deb Nichols, a scientist, joined as a reporter to cover the county beat, allowing Sloan focus on long-form stories.

Kathleen Sloan

But even with Tittle working for free, the publication still wasn't sustainable, even after scoring a $12,000 grant that the New Mexico Local News Fund gave them in order to have six months to figure out a solution. The Sun relied on donations and a few subscriptions from wealthy families, but Sierra County is a poor county in a poor state.

"In an unusual move for a news organization, Sloan said she never considered advertising as a business model for The Sun because it was too big a conflict of interest in a county as small as Sierra County, with limited local businesses," Bhalerao reports. "Tittle said as a very small newsroom they could either focus on the news or sell advertisements, and they chose the former." Besides, Tittle told Bhalerao: "There are only so many advertising dollars, and [The Sentinel has] a lock on it, so we were never really able — or even interested — in selling advertising."

After a fruitless nationwide search for a new operator—no one wanted to work for free—the Sun shuttered in December 2021. Mark Glaser, innovation consultant at the Local News Fund, said many emerging newsrooms must contend with the same financial realities. "The issue with startups is that it’s very easy to start putting content out in the world," Glaser told Bhalerao. "It’s a lot harder to figure out the business part of it."